On Sunday, ziar.md reported a business in Căușeni district in which sunflower husks, long treated as waste, are turned into heating fuel. The piece follows a report published the same morning by Moldova 1: Moldova generates up to 65,000 tonnes of these husks a year, used for briquettes and pellets, and the volume could rise in the coming years.

The example is Svetlana Nițoreanu’s business in the village of Grigorievca. The company makes about 1,000 tonnes of briquettes a year and supplies customers in Căușeni, Ștefan Vodă and Anenii Noi districts and in the Căinari area. She says that, at the start, the husks were thrown away or burned, and that demand has since risen so far that the husks cost more than the kernel. That price comparison is her claim, as Moldova 1 reported it.

“We produce heating briquettes. In the cold season they are certainly in demand. We grew slowly, because there is a market, so we increased our supply every year,” she said. She tied the shift to the gas problem of recent years: many people in the countryside went back to wood and coal, “the way our grandparents used to heat,” and then “moved from gas to biomass.” On the back of that market, she says, she raised both output and sales.

Nationally, Moldova 1 describes sunflower husks as the main agro-industrial residue used for solid biofuels. Total solid-biomass potential is estimated at about 1.8 million tonnes a year, a quantity which, if it were used, could cover more than 30 percent of the country’s thermal-energy consumption. The figure is a potential, not a measure of how much biomass is burned today.

The same report cites a study by the United Nations Development Programme in Moldova. Cereal crops would leave about four million tonnes of straw a year, and a quarter could be used for energy without harming soil quality. Besides straw, the text mentions chaff from energy crops and from clearing green belts, vineyards and orchards, plus biomass left from maize.

Pruning orchards and vineyards would yield about 280,000 tonnes of plant residues each year. Agro-food processing would add more than 60,000 tonnes. Moldova 1 writes that using these residues for energy, while also dealing with the environmental problems, could cut part of companies’ costs and contribute to decarbonising industry.

The photograph shows sunflowers in a garden in Paladea, in northern Moldova. The author is Iurie, and the image is on Wikimedia Commons under a CC0 licence. It is not the plant in Grigorievca, and it does not show the briquettes.

Source consulted: Cojile de floarea-soarelui au devenit o afacere profitabilă în R. Moldova. Din deșeuri se produc brichete pentru încălzire.