scholarly journals Natural Fiber Waste from Palm Oil Tree: An Overview of Potential Usage for Indonesia’s Affordable House Building Materials

The palm oil plantation in Indonesia is an overgrowing industry that also poses significant environmental waste problems. The industry produces numerous unused biomass wastes such as EFB (Empty Fruit Bunch), PKS (Palm Kernel Shell), tree trunks, fronds, etc. On the other hand, the national housing backlog number in 2019 had reached 7.6 million units. The government had launched several housing programs to tackle this ever-repeating issue. Yet, all of the plans failed to solve the housing shortage. A new approach is needed to provide a cheap, affordable, and more environmentally friendly affordable house. Previous studies proved that palm oil fiber waste could be altered into building materials such as lumber and other biocomposites like particleboard, fiberboard, plywood, etc. Consequently, by using the construction scheme in the RSH affordable house program released in 2002, palm oil fiber waste should be able to displace conventional wood in most of its parts. That is why there is no reason to halt implementing palm oil fiber waste as building materials, especially to build an affordable house. Therefore, the burden of Indonesia's never-ending housing backlog problems should be eased by converting its over-abundant palm oil fiber waste as its building materials new renewable sources. Keywords: affordable house; alternative materials; bio-composite; palm oil fiber waste

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (11) ◽  
pp. 5877-5889 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harvindran Vasu ◽  
Choon Fai Wong ◽  
Navin Raj Vijiaretnam ◽  
Yen Yee Chong ◽  
Suchithra Thangalazhy-Gopakumar ◽  
...  

2015 ◽  
Vol 77 (12) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nor Hasanah Abdul Shukor Lim ◽  
Mohd Warid Hussin ◽  
Abdul Rahman Mohd. Sam ◽  
Mostafa Samadi ◽  
Mohamed A. Ismail ◽  
...  

This paper presents the utilization of palm oil fuel ash and oil palm kernel shell as cement and sand replacement, respectively in the production of palm oil fuel ash based mortar mixes as part of new and innovative materials in the construction industry. The study includes basic properties such as water absorption, density, compressive strength, and microstructure test with regards to variations in the mix design process. In order to get better performance in terms of strength development, the ash used was subjected to heat treatment and grounded to the size of less than 2 µm. High volume of 80% palm oil fuel ash was used as cement replacement, while 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% of oil palm kernel shell was used as sand replacement. The results indicated that the density of the mortar decreases with increasing volume of oil palm kernel ash as sand replacement. Three different types of mortar were produced with different percentages of oil palm kernel shell, which was high strength, medium strength, and low strength lightweight mortars.


2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (4.30) ◽  
pp. 393
Author(s):  
Noor Amira Sarani ◽  
Aeslina Abdul Kadir ◽  
Hamidah Syd Othman

The demand for brick materials is expected to increase rapidly. However, pollutant emission during the firing process becomes a threat to the human and environment. Therefore, this study is focusing on the release of pollutant gasses during firing manufactured bricks. The bricks were incorporated with 5% of palm oil waste (palm kernel shell and empty fruit bunches) and fired at different heating rates: 1°C/min, 3°C/min and 5°C/min. All samples were fired until it reached 1050°C and retained for 2 hours soaking time. The gas emission measured during firing process includes carbon monoxide (CO), carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrogen oxide (NO) and sulfur dioxide (SO2). The results of estimated total emission (ETE) of gasses were compared to control bricks and palm oil waste brick. The result obtained has shown that increased heating rates cause decreased in gas emission, especially for CO2 and CO. Therefore, this study determined that pollutant gasses are least minimal at high heating rates (5°C/min). As a conclusion, several pollutant gasses did not comply with the federal Clean Air Act’s National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) set by Environmental Protection Agency.


Author(s):  
Abd Halim Shamsuddin ◽  
Mohd Shahir Liew

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.


2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-33
Author(s):  
Sani Shehu ◽  
Mohd Afandi Salleh ◽  
Edy Fitriawan Syahadat

The oil palm plantation can be found throughout West Africa and palm oil has contributed significantly towards the Nigerian exports. However, the palm oil industry in Nigeria was declining to 36.4% in 1969 and 13.2% in 1974 in spite of being the largest global exporting country at the beginning of 20th Century. Since then, domestic consumption has increased, slow growth in palm oil production and low output was delivered. The equipment of production is considered obsolete, the plantations are aging, the technology access is very little, and financing is insufficient. This indicated a threat and inefficiency of Nigerian palm oil industries to cater for the needs of people regardless of the increase in oil demand locally as the  palm kernel oil is becoming important food and raw materials. Due to this problem, Nigeria remained to receive palm oil from Malaysia even though the seedlings was originated from Nigeria. Other large importers include from Benin, Ghana, Ivory Coast and Togo. This issue has caused Palm oil production in Nigeria to be more expensive and not competitive if compared to other countries like Malaysia and Indonesia. Hence, the objective of this paper explores the challenges facing palm oil industry in Nigeria using qualitative data through document and thematic analysis. The semi-structured interview was analysed by utilizing Atlas ti 8 software. The findings of the paper shows that there are challenges facing palm oil industry in Nigeria such as lack of good planting materials, poor funding, improper milling and lack of technology. From this, it is confirmed that there are numerous challenges facing palm oil industry in Nigeria which requires aids from the government from allocation of huge amount of its budget to agriculture and establish better policies for the palm oil industry that will attract more public and private investment. Keywords: Oil Palm, Palm Oil, Palm Oil industry in Nigeria, Challenges  


2017 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 43
Author(s):  
Wan Muhamad Syafiq Wan Ismail ◽  
Ruwaida Abdul Rasid

<p>Biomass has become one of the most commonly used renewable sources of energy in the last two decades. Empty fruit bunch (EFB) is one of the examples for the biomass that is used as a renewable energy source. From the palm oil processing industry, only 10% are the final products such as palm oil and palm kernel oil, while the remaining 90% are harvestable biomass waste in the form of EFB, palm kernel shell (PKS) and oil palm frond (OPF). This overload amount of biomass waste will cause an abundance of waste which will also affect the environment. To convert EFB into usable energy in ways that are more efficient, less polluting, and economical, gasification has merge as one of the most favorable technological innovations in synthesis gas (syngas) production. The main aim of this work is to study the EFB gasification in an entrained flow gasification process based on the different operating temperature (700<sup>°</sup>C to 900<sup>°</sup>C) and equivalence ratio, ER (0.2 – 0.4), evaluated based on the production of gases such as hydrogen (H<sub>2</sub>), carbon monoxide (CO), carbon dioxide (CO<sub>2</sub>) and methane (CH<sub>4</sub>). It was found that as the temperature was increased from 700<sup>°</sup>C to 900<sup>°</sup>C, the production of H<sub>2</sub> and CO<sub>2</sub> increased while CO was decreased. The optimum ER value of 0.30 was found to attain the highest Cold Gas Efficiency (CGE) value of 74.03% at 900°C.</p><p>Chemical Engineering Research Bulletin 19(2017) 43-49</p>


2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 305-314 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bamidele V. Ayodele ◽  
Chin Kui Cheng

Abstract Malaysia is presently the world’s largest exporter of palm oil with total production of 19.22 million tonnes of crude palm oil (CPO) in 2013. Aside CPO, by-products such as empty fruit bunch (EFB), palm kernel shell (PKS), palm kernel oil (PKO), palm kernel cake (PKC) and pressed palm fibres (PPF) are produced from the palm oil mills. These biomasses can be used as potential feedstock for the production of biofuels, biogas and bioelectricity. One of the ways to fully harness the potentials of these biomasses is by employing the biorefinery concepts where all the products and by-products from oil palm are utilized for production of valuable bio-products. In this study, technological feasibility of biorefinery for the production of biodiesel, hydrogen, Fischer-Tropsch liquids (FTLs) integrated with combined heat and power (CHP) generation was investigated. Flowsheet was designed for each of the processes using Aspen HYSYS® v 8.0. Material balance was performed on a palm oil mill processing 250 tonnes per year of fresh fruit palm (FFP). Results from the material balance shows that 45.1 tonnes of refined bleached deodorized palm oil (RDBPO) and 52.4 tonnes of EFB were available for the production of biodiesel, hydrogen, FTLs and the CHP generation. The annual plant capacity of the biodiesel production is estimated to be 26,331.912 tonnes. The overall energy consumption of the whole process was estimated to be 36.0 GJ/h. This energy demand was met with power generated from the CHP which is 792 GJ/h leaving a surplus of 756 GJ/h that can be sold to the grid. The process modelling and simulation of the biorefinery process shows technological feasibility of producing valuable products from oil palm.


2013 ◽  
Vol 683 ◽  
pp. 246-249 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chin Yee Sing ◽  
Mohd Shiraz Aris ◽  
Hussain Hamoud Al-Kayiem

Combustion of coal, a fossil fuel, in power plant, is a major source of carbon dioxide emission, a greenhouse gas that causes global warming. Malaysia is one of the major exporters of palm oil and has 421 palm oil mills operating in 2010. Some of the residues from these mills like palm kernel shell and palm mesocarp fibre were converted into value-added products. An optimum biomass fuel briquette was obtained with palm kernel shell and palm mesocarp fibre as the major ingredients. Co-firing coal with biomass is a possible approach for power plant to curb the excessive emission of carbon dioxide. In this study, bio-briquette having 50% coal and 50% biomass which consisted of the ingredients of optimum biomass fuel briquette were studied in details. Comparison of the fuel properties, combustion characteristics and carbon dioxide emission between the optimum biomass fuel briquette and bio-briquette was made.


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