Thermal option for energy recovery from two organic substrates: grape and residual sunflower seeds

The aim of this paper is to find out the opportunities of spent grape marc and sunflower oil cake utilization in Romania as a potential source of renewable energy. Different scenarios such as centralized and decentralized power plants are analyzed, underlining the advantage and disadvantage of each solution. In particular this work focuses on electricity production and thermal energy recovery. These types of materials best suit the energy recovery solution, because of their high distribution on the Romanian territory, but also the elemental analysis revealed the composition of these wastes being similar to that of wood, which best fits the combustion process. On the basis of mass and energetic balance, the most appropriate solution will be chosen, but also considering the environmental issue.