An Extensive Technical, Economical and Environmental Assessment of Energy Recovery from Palm-Oil Residues

The Department of Energy Technology at KTH, together with Universidad Autónoma de Bucaramanga, Colombia, proposes to study different possibilities for increasing the usage of palm oil residues for energy production in an optimized way. The main purposes are to maximize the use of the solid residues coming from palm oil extraction, substitute fossil fuels, reduce emissions and environmental impacts and improve the social/economic conditions of the region. The emphasis will be in introducing discarded solid residues as fuel. The study proposed is based on several innovative and unique approaches that include the pelletization of discarded residues for gasification and use in other energy applications, anaerobic digestion of residues for biogas production and the optimization of the energy system considering efficiency, technology availability, environmental issues and economic factors.

Objectives
The general objective is to contribute to the development of an energy efficient and environmentally benign process for energy production from the residues of the palm oil extraction for rural development. The specific objectives are:

- To evaluate different alternatives for energy production from palm oil residues.
- To develop a suitable technology for utilization of residues from palm oil production for providing electricity and process heat.
- To compare the life cycle cost of such process with those of the conventional process.

Project Milestones:
The study proposed plans to address the following issues:

- Technically investigate densification of the EFB to pellets (first priority), as pellets allow storage and a various amount of conversion technologies to be utilized.
- Investigate packed-bed gasification of EFB/bimaterial pellets. Packed-bed gasification with and IC-engine is simpler and have less unit cost than a steam power plant.
- Technically investigate the densification (pellets and briquettes) of other palm-oil residues.
- Feasibility study of fluidized bed combustion from the densified palm-oil residues in order to reduce the emissions from present methods.
- Feasibility study of the use of palm oil briquettes (fibers and shell) for cooking purposes.
- Optimization of the utilization of palm-oil residues from technical, energetic, economical and environmental viewpoint (Environomic analysis).

Period

2006/01/01 - 2009/09/30

Project Partners

KTH – Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan
UNAB - Universidad Autónoma de Bucaramanga

Project Lead

Prof Torsten Fransson, KTH

Researchers

KTH
- Torsten Fransson
- Andrew Martin
- Emilia Björnbom
- Catharina Erlich
- Marianne Salomon

UNAB
- María Fernanda Gómez
- Freddy Carvajal
- Oscar Javier Bernal
- David Vargas

Funding

Swedish Development Agency (SIDA)

Keywords

palm oil residues, cogeneration, polygeneration, gasification, pelletization, optimization, energy recovery, agricultural residues, environomic