Optimal Composition of Palm Oil Biomass to Minimize Biomass Power Plants’ Greenhouse Gases Emission

Abstract

The increasing energy demand and rising concern about climate change have become two significant factors in finding alternative energy sources other than fossil fuels. Biomass has been implemented by several tropical countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia to answer this challenge by utilizing palm oil by-products as boiler fuels to generate steam for palm oil mill (POM) processing as well as for electricity generation. Fiber and kernel shell have become two major palm oil residues that have been implemented for this purpose. Moreover, empty fruit bunch (EFB) can also become another alternative biomass to fuel the boiler. This study is aimed at analyzing and optimizing the utilization of fiber, shell, and EFB by adjusting percentile contents of those three constituents and evaluating the CO2 production. The result of this analysis indicates that the best composition to minimize the CO2 of the biomass power plant is using 70% fiber, 0% shell, and 30% EFB. However, the increase of NO2 and SO2 must also be considered to find the correct balance between those three emissions. In addition, EFB should be pretreated (drying and shredding) before the combustion to reduce the water content and the dimension of EFB.