Designing Energy Plantation for Wood Pellet Production: Don't Choose the White Calliandra!

Day by day more and more parties are interested in the production of wood pellets from the energy plantation. The calliandra energy plantation is the choice of most prospective producers of wood pellets. This is because plants can grow fast and coppice has many advantages, including high woody biomass productivity, does not need to be rejuvenated every year and easy maintenance. And it turns out that the interest in making the calliandra energy plantation has also begun to spread to various regions in Indonesia and even abroad. By making energy plantations, it does have many advantages, especially in the supply of raw material will be more guaranteed and large quantities of raw materials achieved. Some of the advantages of wood pellet production from the energy plantations also can be read here. Besides calliandra, gliricidae ranks second for choice of energy plantation plant species. Even Sri Lanka will soon produce wood pellets from gliricidae, for more details, please read here.

Designing energy plantations for wood pellet production in large capacity is not a simple job. For the global scheme, you can read here. One thing to note is the selection of calliandra seeds themselves. Erroneous selection of calliandra seeds will be fatal, especially for large plantations. It turns out that there are two types of calliandra, namely red calliandra and white calliandra. Red calliandra is suitable for energy plantation and wood pellet production. Why is that? This is because there are several advantages of the species of red calliandra compared to white calliandra, namely first, the ability of coppice for red calliandra can be up to 15-20 years then rejuvenated (replanting), while white calliandra is only about 5 years old for coppice every year and must be rejuvenated. Second, red calliandra wood has a calorific value of more than 4000 kcal / kg while white calliandra is lower than 4000 kcal / kg. So when making the calliandra energy plantation is not automatic any calliandra seed can be used, but it must be selected and the red calliandra selected.

There is one more thing that is usually missed by the parties who will produce wood pellets from the energy plantation, namely optimizing the energy plantation. Of course, to optimize the growth of energy crops fertilizer is needed and if integrated with sheep, goat and cattle farms, then besides meat production it will also produce fertilizer. Though also calliandra leaves are also very good for animal feed because of its high protein content, due to the roots of the calliandra plant which is able to bind nitrogen from the atmosphere. Even if the farms developed are also large, the biogas can also be made of the manure. In addition honey bee farms can also be added, and even calliandra honey, including high-quality honey. For more details about large plantations and large farms, please read here.