Ghana has kicked off construction of the biggest bitumen plant in West Africa. Chief Operating Officer of Ghana’s indigenous oil marketing company, GOIL Company Ltd , Alex Josiah Adzew announced the reports and said that the contract has already been awarded and work has begun on the establishment of a gas plant for the cylinder re-circulation model in the country and the company is looking forward to partnering some banks to fund the projects.
Also Read:Construction of Dansoman roads in Ghana commence
Biggest bitumen plant
The project estimated to cost US $25m, is a partnership between the company and its Ivorian counterparts. It is expected to deliver quality bitumen for road construction in the sub-region and beyond. The chief operating officer was optimistic that with all factors remaining constant, the project will be completed within 18 months.
“This will be the only plant to supply AC10, AC 20 and the PMB, the quality of bitumen used for the construction of the N1 road and that’s the product we want to bring to Ghana. It’s going to be a game changer and we’re partnering with a company in Ivory Coast SMB, which already has a depot in Abidjan and is very experienced in the management of such facilities,” said Mr. Adzew.
Managers of the Ghana Stock Exchange have made an appeal to Goil marketing company, and other listed companies to consider using the stock market to raise funds for their infrastructure projects rather than resulting to bank’s capital.
According to its financial report, there has been a remarkable performance by Goil in the year 2018 which prompted the outgoing Managing Director of Goil Patrick Akorli to promise that the company will consider using the stock market as well as work with banks to raise funds. Over the last five years, Goil profit after tax has grown by 20% per year on average.
My name is Frederick Kufuor Boakye and I believe Ghana should not only use the bitumen for asphalt making for road pavings alone.
The bitumen can be upgraded cost-effectively to separate the undesirable components from the desirable hydrocarbon products contained in the oil. The undesirable component or fraction of the bitumen is called asphaltenes and it is the asphaltenes that are mixed with soil and concrete waste materials that are used for road paving.
The percentage composition of asphaltenes in bitumen is roughly about 20% by mass. The remaining 80% is good quality hydrocarbon oil that can be upgraded cost-effectively with extremely less carbon emissions in the form of CO2. The upgraded oil can be fed directly to the Tema Oil Refinery [TOR] for processing to various hydrocarbon compounds, namely; Gasoline, Diesel fuel, Jet fuel and Mineral base oil .
I have a patent for my invention of the bitumen upgrading described above. Please Google the name of my Canadian company, Northern Oil Research Technologies Inc. and you will see my name and my Canadian patent for my invention.