Energy In Human Form: Sodoma genius Kwena Ngwepe – the face behind the fuel that turns plastic waste into power
By Simon Makgoga
The world fights over fuel.
In Sodoma not the Sodom and Gomorrah of the Bible, infamous for unrepentant sin where sin held progress back, but Sodoma village outside Mokopane under Mogalakwena Municipality a 21-year-old proves genius doesn’t need a postcode.
It is a postcode that should now prick the conscience of Mogalakwena Local Municipality, the Limpopo Provincial Government, and nationally, the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy and the Department of Science and Innovation.
Kwena Ngwepe with a two-litre bottle of self-made diesel on his shoulder
Innovation is bubbling in a rural yard, yet no official eye has turned to see it.
Meet Kwena William Ngwepe, founder of Space World and maker of Space Fuel.
No lab.
No funding.
No engineering degree.
Just a self-built reactor, scrap metal, and a stubborn dream to kill plastic pollution.
He feeds waste plastic into the reactor, fires it up, extracts crude oil, and refines it into real, working petrol, diesel and jet fuel all bottled under his own brand, Space Fuel.
Fierce flames proving the end product is pure fire power
Pirwana Secondary School never taught invention. He taught himself.
His first mission was to clean the environment.
Ngwepe holds self-made charcoal produced from maize cobs
He ended up creating energy.
Speaking in a calm, respectful baritone, almost a velvet voice, he recalls: “I started on 29 March and failed.
My drive kept pushing me.
On 02 April I made my first fuel.”
Hungry for more, he expanded his wings. On 18 May, he conquered charcoal.
He burns maize cobs to ash, properly grinds the fine powder and mixes it with water a charcoal for any social or corporate event cooking you can imagine.
Everything built from nothing. Everything proven by fire.
Now the young founder of Space World is calling for help in any way possible to accomplish his mission copper pipes, welding equipment, generators to test his Space Fuel, a lab to certify it for the world, including financial support to build a proper structure.
While the country debates fuel prices, a genius in Sodoma is already manufacturing Space Fuel from the plastic choking our rivers.
He has turned waste into wealth.
The only question is will South Africa back its own genius before the world comes knocking?
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