Straw instead of coal and gas: a no-fun experiment - 26 December, 2000 - News

The village Drozdy near Belaya Tserkov in the central Ukraine has become a participant of a Danish-Ukrainian experiment. Here, Ukraine’s first straw-consuming boiler-house has been commissioned. The Danish Power Agency allocated fund to revamp the boiler-house where gas had earlier been used (10 more similar projects are being planned in Ukraine). In all, there are 147 households in the village. Water for their heating radiators is now being warmed up by burning half-a-ton straw packs. 16 such lumps are believed to be enough for heating all the households in the village at 20 degrees below zero. The project managers argue that 1/5 of heat and power supply in Denmark is provided exactly this way for which 1m ton of straw is consumed annually. Statistics say that in Ukraine, 4m ton of straw are left idle and burnt without any use on the fields every year. The new technology has already been applied for 6 years and seems to have good prospects. At the same time, it may be noteworthy that straw has always served as a fertilizer. Now, it looks like it is going to fly away with the smoke. What is then becoming of the famous Ukrainian chernozem, or black earth, - asks our corespondent Aleksandr Gorobets reporting from Kiev.