Indonesian Oil Palm Industry have to be "Zero Waste"

Oil palm plant

Indonesian Ministry of Agriculture requested the palm oil processing industry to apply the pattern does not generate waste or "zero waste" from its production.

Director General of Plantation of Agriculture Ministry, Achmad Mangga Barani  said the palm oil industry to utilize the waste from the processing of either solid or liquid into a more useful products.

He said that all this waste was not taken and just dumped and hoped oil palm plant is really zero waste.

He added that one of the benefits of palm oil processing waste is utilized to biogas processing which is capable of generating electricity that can be used for industry or sold to the public.

According to him, to large scale oil palm industry, which has a capacity of more than 30 tonnes of fresh fruit bunches (FFB) per hour, so far generally has utilized their wastes then no waste products that damage the environment.

As for medium-scale palm oil mill, has not been much work on sewage treatment because they still concentrate on producing crude palm oil or only palm oil.

Oil palm fruit

He thought that it would be nice if all such companies processed the waste, because it all  will be a "zero waste", all the components that processed  has no waste at all.

Meanwhile, according to PT Eka Bukit Creative Energy of Indonesia, as the largest oil palm industry country in the world's, the national CPO production reached 20 million tons per year from an area of 7.12 million ha.

Meanwhile, the number of  palm oil mills (POM) is more than 400 units with an installed capacity of 16 thousand of FFB per hour appeared to have potential to generate enormous waste that is 0.53 cubic meters of liquid waste / tonne of FFB processed and 0.25 tons EFB / ton FFB processed.

He said that wastes must be managed in accordance with regulations and laws in force which means this is a cost for the company.

Companies engaged in renewable energy, particularly in the field of biodiesel, bioethanol, biogas, biomass and CDM (Clean Development Mechanism) was introduced biodigestor to address waste from palm oil processing which can produce electricity.

He explained that the processing of palm oil waste into biogas not only reduce the cost of waste disposal but could produce economic benefits.

He gave an example that for the POM with a capacity of 30 tonnes FFB per hour or 146 thousand tons / year,  then approximately 94,900 cubic meters of wastewater produced per year can produce 1.55 cubic meters of methane (CH4).

From that much production of CH4, it can produce electricity for 5.12 million kwh / year or 1 MW and if each kwh sold worth 0.08 U.S. dollars revenue. It will get 410 thousand U.S. dollars / year.

And for the rest of dry waste that is generated when processed into electricity with the boiler system will generate additional electricity for a total of 1.5 kw to 2.5 kw with a total income of 1.36 million U.S. dollars.

Source: antaranews.com

Translated by: harrys