Solar crop dryer can revolutionise nangai production: Longwah | Vanuatu Daily Post

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Nangai nuts Sourced Online

A solar crop dryer is the answer to high costs of nangai (canarium indicum) transportation, heavy nut volume, and the deterioration of the nut quality within 24 hours after falling from trees, says long time South Pacific nut entrepreneur, Charlot Longwah. The next season of nangai starts from September to December and Mr Longwah revealed just last month Kava Store embarked and completed a research on how the use of a solar food dryer can rewrite the production of nangai in the Pacific, the first in the Pacific to obtain a solar semi dry product to value add for domestic market and the potential to gradually value-add from Vt40 per kilo to Vt1,000 a kilo to Vt3,000 and Vt6,000 per kilo for Japanese, Australia and New Caledonia customers.

“It will be a bottom up approach or under the nangai tree or plantation,” he said. “The existing villages in Vanuatu have over 200 sites from 100 to over 1,000 nangae trees, existing mostly in the remote areas. “By minimising oxidation the first 24 hours after the nut falls from the tree to reduce moving the volume in Nuts In Shells(NIS) with solar food dryer contributed to less 90% of total weight, contributing 75% reducing electricity costs to the factory,90% less costs of air/sea freight and land transportation. “Farmers end up with a super semi product,” Longwah said. But he pointed out farmers need extensive training by cracking nuts, removal from the testa with blanched kernel and directly placing it in solar food dryer to dry.

Water shortages threaten renewable energy production, experts warn

The development of new renewable energy technologies and other expanding sources of energy such as shale gas will be limited by the availability of water in some regions of the world, according to research by a US thinktank.

The study shows the reliance on large amounts of water to create biofuels and run solar thermal energy and hydraulic fracturing – a technique for extracting gas from unconventional geological formations underground – means droughts could hamper their deployment.

“Water consumption is going up dramatically. We are introducing all kinds of technology to reduce the carbon impact of energy, without doing anything to reduce its impact on water,” Michele Wucker, co-author of the report, told a seminar at the New America Foundation, a thinktank in Washington.

The study, estimating the water consumption of conventional and renewable energy, found even so-called clean energy solutions use vast amounts of water.

Hydroelectricity far outstrips other forms of energy in its use of water, requiring 4,500 gallons to produce a single megawatt hour of electricity – or about the amount needed to run a flat-screen TV for a year. Geothermal energy uses 1,400 gallons per MW/h.

Corn-based ethanol uses a lot of water to irrigate crops, as do nuclear plants which rely on water for cooling systems. Even some renewable energy sources – such as solar farms – are water hogs because they rely on water for cooling.