Experimental Study of Using Renewable Energy from Palm Empty Fruit Bunch as Additional Fuel in an Incinerator by Gasification Technology

摘要

Empty fruit bunch from palm oil industrial process is always consider as waste and need to dispose properly, however, there is still hiding energy storage within which can be used as renewable and alternative fuel by using gasification technology. This study has aim to characterize the gasification reaction of Palm Empty Fruit Bunch (PEFB) by using two types of reactor; a 10 kg.hr~-1 lab-scale downdraft gasifier and a 50 kg.hr'1 prototype downdraft gasifler, in order to study die characteristic of synthetic gas from PEFB with different operating conditions. The study includes the analysis of physical and chemical characteristic of PEFB then the series of experiments on two types of reactor have been performed. The reaction temperature on reactor has classified on 4 different zones; 200 - 300°C for drying zone, 500 - 800°C for pyrolysis zone, 800 - l,000°C for oxidation zone and 550 - 800°C for reduction zone. The optimum operating conditions of a lab-scale reactor and in pilot-scale reactor are investigated in order to provide the synthetic gas with maximum yield. This synthetic fuel gas shall be used as additional fuel in a waste incineration in order to replace the using diesel oil burner which helps to reduce the operating cost of the incinerator when burned with high moisture waste. The experimental study shows that the synthetic gas from PEFB shall be used as renewable fuel to substitute diesel oil for waste incineration effectively, either in terms of technical and economical aspects. It can be concluded that PEFB should not be considered as waste any more but the renewable energy from PEFB could save fossil fuel and reduce the emission of green house gas for sustainable development society.