Olive pits: ecological fuel for barbecues
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A Greek company has created a fuel for barbecues made from olive pits that has been the winner of the European Business Awards for the Environment 2019.

The olive is used for everything, not only serves to make the best oil in the world, but also its stone is used to make fuel.

Once the olive oil has been ground and extracted, it goes through a cleaning, calibration and drying plant where the clean stone is obtained. This is a product with great caloric power that becomes a fuel with excellent characteristics due to its high density, humidity around 13% and high caloric power. That is why its use for obtaining energy is becoming increasingly important.

In Spain the number of companies dedicated to taking advantage of this material and transforming it into an ecological fuel has grown a lot in recent years, becoming a very fruitful business. Apart from Spain, the olive-producing countries are also investing in this sector.

This is the case of the Greek company Klimis. They are dedicated to compressing the olive pits into an oval shape to create a kind of polygonal pellet with a hole along its axes. These are a perfect fuel for stoves, wood boilers, pyrolysis boilers and fireplaces. They are 100% natural products, free of chemicals and have a high calorific value of 5153 kcal/kg.

But, after long experiments, Klimis has also been collecting the black dust produced by the incomplete combustion of the olive pits in the oven and have created a perfect barbecue fuel (patented by the EU) that does not emit any odours, smoke or sparks. The so-called OleaBriq are black tablets, easy to light, contain no chemicals, have a high calorific value of 6366 kcal/kg and emit 30% less carbon monoxide than charcoal.

The European Union wanted to recognize the innovation of this product and has awarded the company Klimis with the European Business Awards for the Environment 2019. They recognize its efficient use of natural resources without interfering with the life cycle of the olive tree and the recycling of combustion products.

In Spain, the olive stone is mainly used to make biofuel. According to figures from 2018 of the Spanish Association for Energy Recovery from Biomass, is used as heating in more than 100,000 homes, in a 'significant number' of poultry and pig farms, especially in Andalusia and Catalonia, as well as in industries in the food sector.

In our country there are 2.6 million hectares of olive grove cultivation, from which 6.2 million tons of olives are extracted per year, which means about 420,000 tons of stone. Of all this quantity of stones, about 323.500 tons are commercialized and the rest is consumed in the own oil mills and oil extraction companies as a source of heat for their processes.

The commercialization of olive stones as biofuel generates a business of 50.7 million euros annually in Spain. A large part of the production is sold in bulk (283,500 tons), at an average price of 159 euros per ton.

 

 

Source: La Vanguardia

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