Sasol Climate Change Report 2023 - Book - Page 36
INTRODUCTION
TRANSFORMING FOR RESILIENCE
GOVERNANCE
CLIMATE ADVOCACY AND POLICY
DATA AND ASSURANCE
ENERGY BUSINESS CONTINUED
Future-focused sustainable research
We continue to invest in research and development
with, by far, the largest investment being in our
worldwide in-house research facilities.
Recently, we established a Future Technologies team within our
R&T function. The new team was established to identify, assess,
develop, protect and integrate novel technology options,
innovations and advancements.
The team is developing engineering competency in newtechnology areas such as renewable and clean energy generation
and storage, low-carbon (green) hydrogen, carbon capture
utilisation and storage (CCUS) and biomass conversion. This
investment into the future has resulted in increased annual R&T
spend from approximately R600 million to over R840 million and
grown the permanent staff complement from 276 to 299. R&T
spend has also been allocated to numerous research
programmes and collaborations.
Two recent Future Technologies developments:
1
2
CARE-O-SENE
Sasol-NRF collaboration
Launched in September 2022, this is a German-South African research
programme to develop the next-generation of cobalt FT catalysts,
specifically for the production of SAF. The project is funded by the
German federal Ministry of Education and Research and has seven
partners – several German research institutions, the University of
Cape Town, the Sasol Group and Sasol Germany.
In October 2022, Sasol and South Africa’s National Research
Foundation (NRF) hosted the first Research Summit on the Energy
Transition. The event, which brought together academic, research,
government, industry and other stakeholders, focused on how best
to effectively enable a focused national energy-transition research
effort.
The Sasol teams are focused on accelerating development of the
newer versions of the cobalt catalyst to the semi-commercial
production and testing phases. A standout achievement to date has
been the teams’ ability to already demonstrate that our catalyst is
capable of achieving 10% higher SAF yields as targeted by the
CARE-O-SENE programme. This would mean that the SAF yield on a
new plant could be over 80%, resulting in world-leading product
yields, high carbon efficiencies and high hydrogen utilisation.
In 2022, Sasol and the NRF announced that they would jointly fund
four new university research chairs at a cost of R40 million over five
years. The first two chairs will focus on energy and power systems
modelling and green hydrogen. The partners also announced six
postdoctoral fellowships to stimulate and accelerate joint academic/
industry research into clean and sustainable energy.
2022 CARE-O-SENE consortium kick-off meeting, Berlin, Germany
L to R// Prof Jack Fletcher (UCT Chemical Engineering Head of Department), Prof Sue Harrison (UCT Deputy Vice Chancellor Research Internationalisation), Andreas Peschke
(German Ambassador to South Africa), Bettina Stark-Watzinger (German federal Minister of Education and Research), Alan Winde (Western Cape Premier), Dr Thembakazi Mali
(Sasol Senior Vice President Research & Technology), Prof Bernd Rech (Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin Scientific Director)
SASOL CLIMATE CHANGE REPORT 2023
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Inaugural Research Summit on Energy Transition, Johannesburg, South Africa
L to R// Dr Fulufhelo Nelwamondo (NRF CEO), Fleetwood Grobler (Sasol President and CEO),
Dr Eugene Lottering (NRF Deputy CEO Research Innovation Support and Advancement)