Ms Sharon Rademeyer

Sharon ensures the smooth-running of many aspects of the CeBER laboratories. 

My research interest centres around the waste biorefinery concept. The waste biorefinery is and integration of processes that use waste as feedstock to produce high-value products that can be sold for revenue or fed back into the value chain of manufacture. The waste streams include food waste and wastewater, these streams have huge potential because of their high nutrient content. These nutrients are used by biological processes to produce the products. In the biorefinery concept, there is very little to no waste coming out, as much of the waste generated by the processes could be fed into a secondary process that uses the remaining nutrients in the waste stream for energy generation. The waste biorefinery rests on three pillars, as it addresses poor waste management by using the waste to produce competitively priced products which contribute to SA's economic growth and lastly creates employment opportunity.