Malaysia is one of the major producers and exporters of Crude Palm Oil, producing roughly 31% of world\’s production. Over 5 million hectares are being utilized and the Palm Oil industry contributes 8% of Malaysia\’s Gross National Income. As such, it is one of the critical industries for the livelihood of Malaysians. This industry also leaves behind to the tune of 100 million dry tons of Oil Palm Waste. Currently, part of this waste is being used as Organic manure, mulching material and for soil regeneration. The balance goes for open air burning, landfilling and for combustion in boilers. Today\’s process is inefficient and there is a huge potential for improving the efficiency.
In order to carry out proper techno-economic analysis and to create an incentive for teams to do techno-economic analysis, it is vital that one understands potential value that can be created from Oil Palm Waste. This is precisely what Bemgba B. Nyakuma, Olagoke Oladokun and Aliyu A. Bello studied and they published their work in International Journal of Strategic Energy and Environmental Planning.
One of the practical ways to extract energy and value out of Oil Palm Waste is through Gasification. Challenges associated with Gasifictaion of Oil Palm Waste include agglomeration/sintering and tar formation arising from the presence of high moisture content, alkali metal and heterogeneous content. This challenge can be addressed through pre-treatment and pelletization and the team included this in their study.
With the right incentive and the choice of right technologies that exist today (thermo-chemical) and the new ones on the horizon (combination of thermo-chemcial and electro-chemical), value that can be realized through different routes are as follows:
- Recoverable Bioenergy: 5.5 to 7.03 x 10^8 GigaJoules
- Bio-pellet potential: 12.5 to 31.3 million tons
- Bioelectricity: 23 to 79 million MWhr
Read more at International Journal of Strategic Energy and Environmental Planning. Volume 1, no. 3 Page 7