High Quality Solid Biofuel Briquette Production From Palm Oil Milling Solid Wastes

Malaysia has about 4.2 million hectares of oil palm plantation. The palm oil milling industry has over 400 mills throughout the country with total milling capacity of 82 million tonnes fresh fruit bunches, FFB, per year. In 2003, the amount of FFB processed was 67 million tonnes, which generated solid wastes in the forms of empty fruit bunches, EFB (19.43 million tonnes), mesocarp fibres (12.07 million tonnes) and palm kernel shell (4.89 million tonnes). These wastes has moisture content of 60–70% for EFB and mesocarp fibre, and 34–40% for palm kernel shell, and calorific value of 5.0 – 18.0 Mj/kg. A processing technology was developed to process these low quality biomass fuels into high quality solid biofuel briquettes with moisture content in the range 8–12%. Depending on the formulations and the sources of the raw biomass, the final solid biofuel briquettes can have calorific values in the range of 18–25 Mj/kg. The production of the solid biofuel briquettes would be an attractive financial advantage for full exploitation of biomass fuels. Logistic problems due to the disperse nature of the biomass resources would significantly be addressed.