Co-firing of Biogass in Palm Oil Mill Biomass Boilers

There are various commercial ways in utilizing biogas either as fuel for internal or external usage. With the proper technical configuration and system, biogas generated from POME can be directly converted into useful energy either for thermal and heat, electricity or both applications. One of the commercial utilizations of biogas in palm oil mill includes cofiring of biogas in the biomass based boiler.

In the cofiring system, biogas is chanelled and cofired simultaneously with palm biomass, in particular mesocarp fibre in biomass boiler. A gas burner needs to be installed at biomass boiler. The approach considered as simple, fastest and direct approach which requires lower cost of investment. Cofiring offers many advantageous to the palm oil millers, including the economic benefit and reduction of environmental impact of the operation of palm oil mill boilers. Currently, the focus is to evaluate the present cofiring system available at the palm oil mills. The study will focus on the boiler efficiency, environmental impact of the biogas cofiring particularly on the particulate reduction and flue gases composition emitted from the boiler chimney and economic benefits of cofiring to the millers.