The comparative of environmental impacts on waste-to-energy potential of palm oil biomas wastes for electricity generation

Abstract

Malaysia as one of the largest palm oil producer in the world obviously will also generate a large quantity of residues and wastes from its industry. Palm oil industries produced lignocellulosic biomass such as palm oil fronds, palm oil trunks, palm kernel shells (PKS), mesocarp fibres (MF), empty fruit bunches (EFB), and palm oil mill effluent (POME). However, all these biomass wastes may lead to notable environmental concerns in their disposal stages. The main purpose of this research is to assess on life cycle assessment (LCA) of two different types of palm oil biomass; palm oil mill effluent (POME) and empty fruit bunch (EFB) as a potential waste-to-energy sources for electricity generation. This study aims to evaluate the environmental impacts of electricity generation by using POME and EFB as source of fuel. The functional unit in this study was defined as 1 MWh of electricity produced. The scope and system boundary of this study includes palm oil biomass wastes production, electricity production and all transportation activities along its life cycle from ‘gate-to-gate’. All inventory data, inputs and outputs were collected from secondary data of previous studies. Gabi8 software was used to evaluate the environmental impacts such as global warming potential (GWP), acidification potential (AP), human toxicity potential (HTP) and eutrophication potential (EP).