What about wood pellets? The world's leading producer of wood pellets
today, certainly not Indonesia or other Southeast Asian countries, but North
American and Scandinavian countries. Even for Indonesia itself wood
pellet is a new thing, so its production capacity also not big. Wood pellet price is more expensive than PKS. Most
wood pellets are produced in Indonesia from wood waste such as sawdust, wood
shaving, plywood waste and so on. The development potential for quantity
enlargement is also very possible with energy plantations. Technically
the properties of wood pellets are not much different from the PKS.
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| Japan biomass power plant status map, red means already operating, yellow means in the development stage, blue means in the planning. |
Biomass is one of
the alternatives fuel of power plants in
Japan, following the accident or destruction of the Fukushima nuclear power
plant (NPP) in 2011. PKS becomes
the favorite choice of biomass power plants there. Most of these biomass
power plants use PKS as their energy source, and only a few operate with wood
pellets. The large number of biomass power plants built, automatically
also requires a lot of fuel supply. Most of the biomass power plants are
built in 2015 and by 2017 some of them are in operation and by 2019 it is
estimated that they are all operating, so it can be imagined the need and
competition to get the supply of the PKS.
Japan is a
country that almost all rely on imports to meet domestic needs, this is because
the potential of the natural resources is minimum there, including the energy
sector. With a population of approximately half of Indonesia, their
energy consumption is almost 5 times Indonesia, so practical energy needs
including fuel is also huge. The biomass power plant that uses wood
pellets predicts that in the next 1 - 2 years there will be a shortage of supply
of PKS, so early on it has anticipated, although at present the advantage of
selling electricity is smaller, because of its more expensive raw material
(wood pellet) prices. With this experience they will confident if next
years wood pellets become more common fuel.
PKS must meet the
specifications before being exported to the destination country. Some
key specifications for PKS are: moisture content, calorific value and
impurities or contaminants (foreign materials). All three variables must
meet a certain level to achieve export quality. Japanese markets or their
consumers generally require contaminants from 0.5 to 2%, while European 2% - 3%.
A simple process can be done to get the quality of the PKS as above. Japan
usually buys with a volume of 10,000 tonnes per shipment or their import, so
for PKS providers must prepare a sufficient stockpile for the PKS. The
location of PKS stockpile that close to the seaport is the ideal condition to
facilitate transportation to shipment.
Wood pelletproduction process is more complex than PKS, so wood pellet is categorized as
finished product. PKS can be said raw product because of its industry
activity is very minimal and simple, as explained above. In the production
process of wood pellet will include selection of raw materials and the
properties namely : cleanliness, drought, size, shape and hardness. Based
on the characteristics of these raw materials, the next process varies until
become the wood pellet products. The wood pellet production process is
very much like the wood briquette. The quality of wood pellet is
generally viewed from its density, calorific value and ash content. Indonesia
wood pellet export is not as big as PKS, it is also because of the limited
producers of wood pellet itself. Japan buys wood pellets from Indonesia
mostly for testing on their biomass power plants. Shipping or export by
container is still common in wood pellet commodity because the volume is still
small.
For short-term
orientation exporting PKS is a profitable business. This PKS some time
ago only waste that contaminate and unworthy then large amount of it only used for
road hardening and so on, but currently become a “hot” commodity. Wood pellets with raw materials from energy plantations by planting the legume types such as calliandra are medium-term
solutions to meet biomass fuel needs in Japan. Torrefaction followed by densification can be
a long-term orientation, so the torrified pellets product is superior to wood
pellets because it can save transportation and facilitate handling, hydrophobic
and higher calorific value.
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| Torrified Pellets |
Government
Regulation namely Indonesian Minister of Finance Regulation No. 67/2010 on
Stipulation of Export Goods Subject to export duties (BK = Export Duties) have
purpose to push downstream or production of various derivative products from
oil palm including PKS. But the fact is not much that happened in the
field related to PKS. In fact, many PKS providers are experiencing setbacks and
even closed their businesses. This BK has made the price of PKS higher,
thus making the market demand decrease. The higher the BK for the raw
product and the lower the BK for the finished product the downstreaming will be
faster, but it must be done through the process gradually, well-planned and
comprehensive. Ideally the BK for the finished product is zero percent.
Does
the government ask people to wait next 2 years when PKS prices are
high because their needs are projected to rise sharply? We don't know. While the best scenario is to reduce taxes so that the industries can grow so then
they can start develop new products. Torrefaction of PKS becomes
torrified PKS becomes the best solution for next development, because upgrading
of PKS quality will give more economic value added. Carbonization or
pyrolysis of PKS to PKS charcoal (PKSC = palm kernel shell charcoal) and then
followed by densification into PKS charcoal pellets is also an attractive
alternative.
