Maximizing Palm Oil Mill Profits with Cogeneration Utilization of EFB (Empty Fruit Bunch) and Export of PKS (Palm Kernel Shells)

As a profit-oriented company, maximizing profits is a natural and ongoing endeavor. Besides increasing efficiency, innovation can also be pursued, creating or developing new businesses. This is especially true if the innovations involved in creating new businesses also address environmental issues, such as utilizing palm oil mill biomass waste. In palm oil mills, empty fruit bunch (EFB) waste is generally underutilized, or if utilized, it is still suboptimal or inadequate, such as composting empty fruit bunches (EFB).

Empty fruit bunches (EFB) are a significant biomass waste product from palm oil mills, accounting for approximately 22% of the total production, but are generally underutilized and pollute the environment. Utilizing EFB through cogeneration will not only address the problem of EFB, but also generate heat or energy to replace the use of palm kernel shells (PKS) as boiler fuel, and also produce high-quality organic potassium ash fertilizer.

If the PKS used for boiler fuel reaches 50%, then using this technology means that 50% of the PKS can be recovered, or 100% of the PKS can be sold or exported. For example, a palm oil mill normally sells 3,000 tons of PKS per month. With this technology, the mill can sell 6,000 tons of PKS per month. This would certainly increase the supply of PKS significantly.

Even if applied on a larger/macro scale, namely in Indonesia with CPO production of around 50 million tons/year, the actual production of PKS is around 12.5 million tons/year. However, with the current practice of utilizing PKS as boiler fuel, say reaching 50% of PKS production, the actual amount of PKS that can be sold/exported by palm oil mills is 6.25 million tons/year. Now, with the use of this technology or the installation of equipment (EFB furnace cogeneration), the amount of PKS that can be sold/exported will be close to or equal to the PKS production in the mass balance or diagram above (not subtracting the amount burned in the palm oil mill boiler).

The demand for palm kernel shells (PKS) is increasing in line with the global decarbonization trend. In fact, PKS is a major competitor for wood pellets in the global biomass fuel market. Large PKS users come from Japan and Europe. PKS exports to Japan typically reach around 10,000 tons per shipment, while those to Europe typically reach a minimum of 30,000 tons per shipment due to the longer distances and the use of handymax or even panamax vessels. Cogeneration of empty fruit bunch (EFB) furnaces with palm oil mill boilers will increase the volume of PKS that can be sold or exported. Implementing this technological innovation, besides being the fastest and most practical, also offers multiple benefits, making it worthy of consideration. It could even become a trend and even a standard operating procedure in Indonesia's approximately 1,000 palm oil mills.