EFB Pellets as Biomass Fuel Transition from PKS to Wood Pellet Energy Plantations?

The high demand for palm kernel shells or PKS makes their availability or supply increasingly limited. The properties of palm kernel shells or PKS which have many similarities to wood pellets make them the main competitor for biomass fuel in the global market. The high demand for palm kernel shells is not only because the price is usually cheaper than wood pellets, but also the large availability can be achieved because of the large number of palm oil mills, also especially the many new biomass power plant developments that can use 100% palm kernel shells, namely biomass power plants with fluidized bed combustion (CFBC or BFBC) technology, read more details here. 

Under these conditions, efforts to obtain new biomass fuel become important. The palm oil industry itself produces a lot of biomass waste so it has potential as raw material for new biomass fuel. One of the biomass wastes that has not yet been utilized and is large in volume and has the potential to pollute the environment is palm oil empty bunches or EFB (empty fruit bunch). Every ton of crude palm oil or CPO production will produce approximately 1 ton of EFB waste. This means that with an average palm oil mill capacity of 45 tonnes of FFB/hour, around 10 tonnes/hour of crude palm oil (CPO) will be produced and 10 tonnes/hour of EFB waste. So, for example, if a palm oil mill operates 20 hours/day, approximately 200 tons of EFB waste will be produced/day. And with the number of palm oil mills in Indonesia estimated at 1,000 units, the amount of EFB waste will also huge.

PKS and EFB are both biomass waste from palm oil mills. Both can be easily obtained from palm oil mills in abundant quantities. PKS can even be used directly as biomass fuel, whereas EFB requires pre-treatment first. The EFB that comes out of the palm oil mill is very wet and the shape and size still need to be adjusted to make the follow-up process easier. EFB pellet production is a solution for EFB waste. But apart from that, so that this EFB pellet product can be used more widely or like wood pellets in general, there is an additional process to reduce the amount of mineral content in the ash.

Meanwhile, wood pellets from energy plantations could become the next source of biomass fuel, although currently someone has already started doing so. Because the raw material for EFB pellets is palm oil mill waste and is abundant, it requires a smaller investment, so EFB pellets can be used as transitional biomass fuel before biomass fuel in the form of wood pellets from energy plantations. Investing in land and its preparation as well as creating an energy plantation costs a lot of money. But the advantage of wood pellets from this energy plantation is that the availability of raw materials, even in very large volumes, can be more guaranteed. Apart from that, there are also other benefits from using the leaves as animal feed, especially ruminants and the flowers for honey bee farming.