Innovation in sustainability

Trinidad and Tobago

Shane Boodoo, general manager of Diproinduca Trinidad, talks to The Energy Year about the company’s potential combined production of a fertiliser and a renewable fuel, as well as its work in site remediation for the energy industry. Diproinduca Trinidad provides industrial waste and byproduct management services as well as trading and stevedoring services.

What were some of your core areas of focus for activity in the past year?
We have been continuing our DRI [direct-reduced iron] process, whereby we utilise metal and iron byproducts to create briquettes which can be fed back along with virgin feedstock into steel manufacturing plants. It’s a way in which we recycle what would usually be waste material into a usable form for steel manufacturing.
We have also been looking at developing an organic fertiliser and a renewable fuel. We are studying the use of sargassum to produce a biofertiliser, among other products, which could also be combined with our briquette technology to produce a sustainable biofuel.

In what ways are you generating business activity from the energy industry?
Our key area of focus in going forward in the energy industry specifically is with regard to site remediation. There is a lack of proper cleanup service companies in Trinidad and the Caribbean, so we have partnered with a company in Belgium on this. We are looking to provide entire-site remediation, including services such as soil cleaning.
One of the sites we are looking at measures 43,000 square metres and has significant contamination in the water table and the soil. We are joining our expertise with that of our new partners in Belgium to develop a solution. Our goal is to extract the hydrocarbons from the water table, which can then be sold to a facility, then we will treat the soil to restore its health.

What are your key areas of focus for 2024 and going forward?
We plan to continue investing and conducting more research and development for our products, such as the sargassum biofertiliser. Further to these efforts we have partnered with a regional university to scale up tech to produce sodium alginate from sargassum as well.
We will be partnering with an international environmental services company to provide solutions that are not yet available locally. Our MoU with them will allow us to represent their technology within Caricom.

Read our latest insights on:

• Trinidad and Tobago