• by Busani Bafana (bulawayo)
• Tuesday, April 27, 2010
• Inter Press Service

Zimbabwe spends an estimated 100 million dollars a year importing aluminium sulphate for water treatment plants. But a local entrepreneur has developed a technique to extract the needed compound from kaolin and flint clays abundantly available within the country.

In 2005, Alex Saurombe, a mining surveyor by training, funded researchers at Bulawayo's National University of Science and Technology to look for a way of producing aluminium sulphate from the clays, vast reserves of which are found in the Chivumburu area of Rutenga in Masvingo province, 450 km east of Bulawayo.

With a loan from the Innovation and Commercialisation Fund of Zimbabwe's Ministry of Science and Technology, the technique was further refined into a commercially-viable industrial process.

The clays have a high concentration of aluminium oxide, which reacts with sulphuric acid to produce aluminium sulphate. Aluminium sulphate is an industrial chemical that causes impurities in water to curdle and settle to the bottom for easy removal.

Bulawayo alone goes through five tonnes of the the stuff every day. The city's deputy director of Engineering Services, Ian Mtunzi, told IPS, 'We buy the chemical from local agents who complement what they can source locally with imports from South Africa.'

According to Saurombe, these local agents have strong political connections which have interfered with the construction of a processing plant since 2005. At the time, he said, they had planned to produce the aluminium sulphate locally at a cost of about about $68 a tonne.

Unofficial estimates put the cost of a tonne of imported chemical at between $300 and $450. State-owned Zimbabwe Phosphate Industries also produces it within the country, but water engineers in the capital, Harare, have reported problems with the quality of supply.

'These (political connections) prevented me getting this venture to fly,' Saurombe told the IPS. 'We approached everyone from the Infrastructural Development Bank to the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe itself without luck. We had signed an agreement with the Mwenezi District Council to participate and build a township for the plant and then we (would only have needed to) borrow $7 million for the plant.' He claims he would have been producing 80,000 tonnes a year by now, for both local and export markets. Saurombe has now abandoned the idea of setting up production in Zimbabwe; he has submitted an application to build a plant in Swaziland instead.

Meanwhile, the city of Bulawayo and other urban centres struggle to find funds to treat water.

'We have received reports from concerned residents in Magwegwe West suburb about brown water coming out of their taps, but council has said it is safe despite the doubtful colour,' the coordinator of the Progressive Bulawayo Residents Association, Rodrick Fayayo, told IPS. Many residents routinely boil their water as a precaution.

Since 2008, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has bailed out the council by a donating the bulk of its aluminium sulphate needs to ensure Bulawayo had safe drinking water.

Even with this assistance, the city council does not know where it will find the $20 million dollars it needs to rehabilitate its water treatment works. Revenue is further constrained by unpaid bills from residents and government buildings amounting to more than $3 million.

The more than $100 million a year being spent on needlessly expensive aluminium sulphate would go some way towards the rehabilitation of water treatment works for a number of cities in Zimbabwe.

© Inter Press Service (2010) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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