Page 14 - Science in Africa

Doctor BO Oboirien Professor Onisimo Mutanga

Creating

energy

from old

tyres

Doctor BO Oboirien works
at the Council for Scientific Researching
and Industrial Research’s
energy material department
within the Faculty of
Material Science and
Manufacturing.
His area of expertise is earth remotely
chemical engineering,
fluidisation, gasification,
oxy-combustion, waste-to-
energy and geopolymer
production. rofessor Onisimo Mutanga is a years towards the automation and
He has done research on Zimbabwean and is a full professor operationalisation of remotely sensed data in
the valuation of carbon and acting dean in the School of forestry, agriculture and rangeland monitoring.
dioxide capture in fluidised Agricultural, Earth and Professor Mutanga has also contributed
bed reactors under oxy- Environmental Science at the immensely to capacity building in Africa by
combustion conditions for PUniversity of supervising to completion 16 PhD and 28
different South African KwaZulu-Natal. MSc students in the field of geo-
coals and the synthesis of He completed his PhD on information science.
geopolymers from high- hyperspectral remote sensing of The graduated students have
carbon bottom ash. tropical grass quality and quantity now been absorbed in key sectors
In ground-breaking at Wageningen University-ITC (the of the economy including the
research to address Africa’s Netherlands) in 2004. He is an South African National Space
challenges, he has worked NRF B-rated scientist with more Agency (Sansa), the forestry
on the recovery of energy than 120 scientific publications and industry, research institutions and
and generation of high-value 3 379 citations. agricultural departments.
carbon products from tyres His expertise lies in vegetation He has been invited as an editor and
and biomass through a low- (including agricultural crops) pattern and guest editor of a number of international
temperature gasification condition analysis in the face of global and journals and serves in several national and
process. land-use change using remote sensing. He international research committees. Professor
This helps addressing the integrates ecology, biodiversity conservation and Mutanga has collaborated with Sansa on a
problem associated in the remote sensing to model the impact of forest number of initiatives such as the EO-SAT1
disposal of used tyres that fragmentation, pests and diseases and invasive Satellite Project where he participated in the
is prevalent in Africa. species on agricultural and natural ecosystems. mission advisory committee that was
He has published Professor Mutanga’s research includes the responsible for advising technical specification
extensively in various development of innovative remote-sensing for the satellite.
publications and journals approaches for providing timely and up-to-date He has also proactively participated in the
and is currently mentoring information for improved proactive intervention organising of scientific committees for the
four master’s students. measures in managing resources. African Remote Sensing Association that was
His research focus has been shifting over the hosted by Sansa in 2014.
14 SCIENCE IN AFRICA