Bioenergy Production From Sunflower Husk in Ukraine: Potential and Necessary Investments

Abstract

Sunflower is a strategic crop in the agriculture of Ukraine as it is important for food and energy production. Recently the processing of secondary products, solving the issues of waste disposal and improving the environment have been paid much attention. This is an example of a cyclic economy, as during the production of oil from sunflowers, their husk can be used for energy production. The ash obtained by burning husk is a valuable complex mineral fertilizer and can be further applied as ecological fertilizer. The aim of this article is to assess the energy and investment potential for sunflowers as an internal reserve for increasing production efficiency and reducing carbon dioxide emissions. In particular, the equivalents of energy substitution of sunflower husks for energy costs at fat-and-oil enterprises, the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions are estimated. A generalized scheme for the production of electricity from sunflower husks is considered. In particular, the use of ash from sunflower husks as a fertilizer is described. The research has shown that the sunflower husks available in Ukraine can be used more efficiently to produce electricity. Therefore policy recommendations were developed based on a study conducted.

Modeling of the Synthetic Indicator of Competitiveness of Agricultural Enterprises: A Methodological Approach to the Use of Neural Network Tools

“…According to the position of scientists (Yankovyi, 2013;Khalimon, 2016;Horák et al, 2023) the indicator of competitiveness of an enterprise should be considered as a latent (hidden) characteristic of an enterprise, which does not have a single measure. Latent characteristics appear on the "surface" of economic phenomena in the form of a set of symptom factors -individual group indicators and/or partial indicators, which reflect different aspects of complex economic systems.…”

“…In such situations, it is possible that the normalized indicator will be equal to zero, which can cause an error in further calculations, therefore, to avoid this case, we suggest using modified normalization methods. Normalized indicators in this case will be in the range of 𝑧𝑧 𝑖𝑖 ∈ [1; 2] (Chikov, 2021) (11,12):…”

Increasing the Efficiency of Loading Devices for Biomass Boilers

“…The main disadvantages of such biomass include the low bulk density and a large number of volatile particles uneven in size and shape. The properties of various types of biomass waste have been investigated by many scientists in Ukraine [6][7][8][9] and abroad [10][11][12], but due to the large number of types of biomass suitable for energy use and the development of new technologies, projects are being carried out with the aim to improve the research area.…”

“…The most common method is the direct combustion of biomass and its wastes in the furnaces of boiler units for heat and electricity. For example, currently in Ukraine, there are up to 20 CHPPs and thermal power plants that function on wood chips and sunflower husks; projects of another 30 power plants are at different stages of development, from the idea to the project design [1,6,13,14]. Depending on the type of boiler, it is possible to burn biomass of various sizes (firewood, briquettes, pellets, sawdust, and agricultural waste) and in different ways (burning in a dense layer, boiling layer, ingrown burning, etc.).…”

“…There are several types of biomass boiler-loading devices used to deliver biomass fuel into the combustion chamber. The most common types of biomass boiler loading devices are described below [2,6,12,19].…”