Sanhaja, Tunisia: Yassine Khelifi’s little workshop hums as a big machine converts olive waste into a valuable energy source in a country that relies heavily on imported fuel.
Khelifi held a handful of compacted olive residue, a thick paste left over from oil extraction, and remarked, “This is what we need today.” “How can we transform something worthless into wealth?”
For millennia, rural Tunisian households have burned olive waste for cooking and warmth or fed it to animals. The International Olive Council predicts Tunisia to be the world’s third-largest olive oil producer in 2024-2025, with a yield of 340,000 tonnes. Khelifi, an engineer who grew up in a farming family, established Bioheat in 2022 to address the issue. He recalls seeing workers in olive mills using olive waste as fuel.
I’ve always wondered how this material could burn for so long without going out,” he explained. “That’s when I asked myself: ‘Why not turn it into energy?’
Beyond profit, Khelifi thinks his firm will help “reduce the use of firewood as the country faces deforestation and climate change.
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