The Palm Oil industry generates large quantity of wastes whose disposal is a challenging task. Image: bioenergyconsult.com)
The Palm Oil industry generates large quantity of wastes whose disposal is a challenging task.
The empty fruit bunches are left as residues, and the fruits are pressed in oil mills.
The Palm Oil fruits are then pressed, and the kernel is separated from the press cake (mesocarp fibers). The palm kernels are then crushed and the kernels then transported and pressed in separate mills. In a typical Palm Oil plantation, almost 70% of the fresh fruit bunches are turned into wastes in the form of empty fruit bunches, fibers and shells, as well as liquid effluent. These by-products can be converted to value-added products or energy to generate additional profit for the Palm Oil Industry.
It does not have to be like that!
It seems that there are no obvious off-the-shelf solutions, but there are pathways to turn ‘waste’ into revenue. For close to 15 years, we have been developing technologies to convert agricultural residues into bio-renewable chemicals and energy and have also evaluated selected biomass from the palm oil industry. Our approach is only one step towards the solution, but an important step, as in essence we “condition” the biomass to make further processing easier and in doing so, we make money from extracting a high value chemical, which we are able to trade into global niche markets.
Here’s the link to our proposal: ift.co.za/palm-residues
See on www.bioenergyconsult.com
via Scoop.it – Furfural and its many By-products
Filed under: Topics of Interest Tagged: bio-renewable chemicals, furfural, green energy, palm residue
