Citation: Massawe SB, Olorunnisola AO, Adenikinju A (2016) The Environmental Challenges of Biomass Utilisation for Combined Heat and Power Generation in a Paper Mill in Tanzania. J Fundam Renewable Energy Appl 6: 202. doi:10.4172/2090-4541.1000202
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the respondents believed that the mill operation caused environmental problems. The mill had different levels of impact environmental impacts across the villages (Figure 2), of all the respondents, 31.1% mentioned air pollution in form of smoke, bad smell and ashes from the Paper Mills, 25.5% mentioned bad smell only, while 20.8% reported that there had not been any significant environmental impact. Less than 10% mentioned smoke from the power Plant, dust pollution especially that which was caused by moving cars carrying tree logs from harvesting sites to the paper mill. These findings corroborate those by WWF-2006 which argued that plantations and biomass use have negatively impact on biodiversity, water resources, soil quality, and air pollution. An environmental impact assessment done at Mufindi Paper Mill by Nzalalila et al. [23] also indicated that, the likely key environmental issues relating to mill operations included generation of solid, liquid, heat, and gaseous wastes which, if not properly disposed could lead to environmental pollution. The same source also asserted that solid wastes can result in abnormal piling of debris and emission of noxious and malodorous gases and that sometimes fire may result, dust might lead to breathing and lung problems. Again the type of environmental problems mentioned differed depending on the distance of the village from the Paper Mill. Air pollution by ashes from the power generation plant was recorded only at the distances greater than 17 km. Dust had environmental impact at 6-17 km or more (Figure 3). This is because most of these villages are close to the main road heading to the paper mill. Hence, there was higher vehicle traffic especially during the transportation of both raw materials from the forest to the paper mill, and the paper products to Dar es Salaam. When the distance from the paper mill and the associated environmental problem was statistically tested, however there was no significant association between the two variables (Table 3). Therefore the null hypothesis was accepted. This means that despite the change in distance from the paper mill, most villages experienced the same type of environmental problems. This could be due to the height of the smoke chimney of the paper mill. Effects of environmental pollution on human health, physical facilities and biodiversity About 34% of the respondents opined that the pollution caused by the paper mill led to frequent coughing, 14.2% reported being diagnosed with chest diseases as the result of inhaling the polluted air from the paper mill while 6.6% reported food contamination by ashes coming from the paper mill. About 4% reported death of fishes as the result of discharge of untreated effluent from the Paper mill to the nearby river. About 32.2% of the respondents were not aware of any environmental impact resulting from operation of the paper mill. These respondents believed that further scientific studies should be carried out to identify the likelihood of any impact as some of the impacts might take years to identify. The remaining 6.6% believe that the environmental pollution problems had led to iron sheet rusting, flue and coughing (Table 4). Availability of environmental management programmes From the findings, about 82.2% of the respondents reported that there were environmental management programmes and activities being undertaken. Also this study indicated that there were several types of environmental programmes mostly aimed at mitigating the
S. N
Conversion formula 5.5 m 3 tonne of FTPA
Area
Unit
Total wood Remarks
Paper production
54,545.50 FTPA
300,000 m 3
1
Biomass for power generation and power boiler
About 44.6 (35.6+9.0) MW will be generated.
292,000 tonnes/a (800t/d * 365 days)
575 kg/m 3
167,900 m 3
2
467,900 m 3
Total wood requirement
Table 1: Paper mill wood requirement.
argued that households with less land tend to be poor in off-farm capital and therefore cannot afford to continue sustainable agriculture. Size of land used for tree plantation About 84% of the respondents used ≤ 10 ha for tree planting, 11.3% used 11-20 ha, while 2.8% used ≥ 21 hectares for tree planting. There was a noticeable shift from growing of food crops to cash crops, especially tree planting. The shift was motivated by the increasing prices of wood products especially timber and the huge market for electricity poles and wood fuel at the Paper Mill. At the time of this study, there were already cases of food price increases. Despite the fact that many respondents believed that this might have been caused by increased demand from the number of people who were working at the mill, another reason could be due to the decline in the number of farmers who were involved in growing food crops. These results correlate the findings of ABN-2007 [22] who reported that in Zambia, farmers were persuaded by agribusinesses to grow cotton instead of maize only to see market prices. Wood waste utilization Fuel wood used at the Paper Mill for electrical power generation was in form of wood waste. The researcher wanted to know what the respondents did with the wood waste after they had harvested their trees. The findings indicated that 71.7% of the respondents had no idea of what they would do with such wood waste after harvesting. This was perhaps because 78.3% of the respondents had not yet harvested their trees. However 13.2% of the respondentsleft their wood waste on the farm after harvesting, 12.3% used as firewood, while 2.8% were burning it on the field as a means of land clearing for the next planting season. The researcher also observed that even Paper Mills left most of the waste at the field after harvesting trees (Figure 1). When asked why they were leaving the tree branches and roots while they could be used as fuel at the cogeneration plant the harvesting manager said: ‘‘The branches and roots are the smallest parts and for now we don’t have any mechanism to transfer them to the mill. Also we have a lot of raw materials in forms of wood chips from other supplies and from our sister company’’. Environmental problems resulting from wood biomass use at paper mill Data collected from the field indicated that 78.3% of the respondents believed that there were environmental impacts associated with Mufindi paper mill, while 21.7% believe that there were no environmental impacts. From such finding it is clear that the majority of
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