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Numerical analysis of emission component from incineration of palm oil wastes

Mohamed Harimia,, M.M.H. Megat Ahmadb, S.M. Sapuanb, Azni Idrisc
School of Engineering and Information Technology, Universiti Malaysia Sabah, 88999 Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 Serdang, Selangor, Darul Ehsan, Malaysia c Department of Chemical & Environmental Engineering, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 Serdang, Selangor, Darul Ehsan, Malaysia
b a

Received 26 June 2003; received in revised form 22 April 2004; accepted 1 June 2004

Abstract In the last decade, there has been an increasing awareness of the use of by-products and wastes from palm oil mills with the dual objective of reducing their environmental impacts and enhancing the economic viability of the crop. The recycling aspects of palm oil cultivation and palm oil processing have been reviewed and have provided an indication of the present and future use of palm oil biomass current applications being mainly for organic fertilizers and fuel. In the present work, the emissions from incineration of two types of palm oil wastes (POW) bre and shell are considered, and compared to fuel oil. The results, which indicate less pollutant emission from incineration of POW compared to that of fuel oil, have been presented graphically. r 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Palm oil waste; Shell; Fiber; Incineration; Emission

1. Introduction Malaysia has abundant biomass waste resources coming mainly from its palm oil, wood and agroindustries. A total of about 665 MW capacity can be expected of the estimated overall potential of about 20.8 million tons of biomass residues from these main sources [1]. It is envisaged that 700 MW
Corresponding author. Tel.: +60 88 320000 3091; fax: +60 88 320 348 E-mail address: harimimo@ums.edu.my (M. Harimi).

or 5% share of total electricity demand of the country by 2005 offered to renewable energy is not difcult to achieve if the palm oil industry takes up the challenge [2]. In the palm oil mill, palm oil fruits are considered as the source to obtain the oil. In general, the normal fresh fruits bunches can be a combination of 51% of palm oil fruits, 67% palm kernel, 1415% of bre, 67% of shell, and 21% of empty fruit bunch (EFB) by weight [3,4]. In 2001, there were 352 palm oil mills in Malaysia, of which about 70% were located in Peninsular Malaysia, data concerned are given in Table 1 [5].

0961-9534/$ - see front matter r 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.biombioe.2004.06.008

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340 Table 1 Number of oil mills, reneries and palm kernel crushing factories in operation in 2001 in Malaysia Region Oil mills No. P. Malaysia Sabah Sarawak Total (Malaysia) 244 89 19 352 Capacitya 45,373,720 18,750,600 3,620,400 67,744,720 Reneries No. 38 9 47 Capacityb 10,952,900 4,596,500 15,549,400 Crushing factories No. 30 8 38 Capacityc 3,254,600 1,057,500 4,312,100

Original Source: MPOB (www.mpob.gov.my) a Tonnes FFB/year. b Tonnes CPO/year. c Tonnes Palm Kernel/year.

Parallel increases in the amount of biomass available from palm oil mills for use as energy resources can also be expected. A small portion is used for the mills heat and power requirements in a very inefcient manner. Currently, most of these residues are disposed of through incineration, open burning and dumping. Many novel proposals for converting these wastes into useful products have been suggested but very little commercial success has been achieved. One obvious solution is therefore to use them as cheap and renewable energy resources for generating electric power and process steam. This project focuses on computing the maximum temperature that can be achieved from the combustion of palm oil waste POW. It also compares the fuel gases emissions of POW with the commonly used boiler fuel to predict the emission reduction potential from the incineration of POW. A computer program has been developed in Fortran language based on chemical equilibrium reactions to analyze the exhaust gases.

cally depending on the complexity of the problem related to equations. Beside the above two analyses, ame temperature has been estimated by an enthalpy balance across the incinerator. 2.1. Chemical analysis In the chemical analysis mole balance is used, including six equations related to carbon, hydrogen, sulfur, chlorine, oxygen, and nitrogen. Besides these six equations, there are six other equations related to chemical equilibrium reactions which are given as, CO 1O2 CO2 ; 2 H2 1O2 H2 O; 2 SO2 1O2 SO3 ; 2 N2 O2 2NO; NO 1O2 NO2 ; 2 2HCl 1O2 H2 O Cl2 : 2 (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)

2. Methodology In the incineration of POW, two main parts are taken into account for the chemical and mathematical analysis, in addition to ame temperature estimation. In chemical analysis, we are concerned with conducting mass balance or molar balance in addition to chemical equilibrium equations, whereas in mathematical analysis it is applied to solve the problem whether analytically or numeri-

The equalities mean that the reactions are reversible, and from reactions (1) to (6) we use the constant of chemical equilibrium K according to Eq. (7). The constants Ai, Bi, Ci, Di, Ei depend on the chemical equilibrium reactions and given by Table 2 [6]. LogK i Ai =T Bi LogT C i T Di T 2 E i : (7)

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Table 2 Constants used in Eq. (7) i 1 2 3 4 5 6 Ai 14908.82 12437.22 5295.71 4720.75 3029.71 3061.31 Bi 0.100 1.407 0.362 17.588 0.271 0.015 Ci (105) 6.765 12.876 40.592 0.3273 9.3840 3.9280 Di (103) 19.100 0.873 12.876 1.309 14.510 11.785 Ei 5.0600 1.7090 4.5996 0.6321 3.1899 3.5167

Therefore, we have 12 equations to be solved numerically because the six equations that are related to chemical equilbrium constants Ks are non-linear. It is assumed that the products of combustion are in gaseous form and the total pressure is set equal to 1 atm. 2.2. Mathematical analysis In the combustion of POW three essential elements are formed, carbon, hydrogen, and sulfur; therefore the products of combustion are related to these elements and also depend on the temperature and excess air used. As we have mentioned before, there are 12 non-linear equations to be solved; but we can reduce these equations by 50% by performing some manipulations of variables, and our system will be of just six unknowns. The equations are all set equal to zero and are represented by F i X 1 ; X 2 ; . . . ; X 6 0 for i 126; (8)

2.3. Flame temperature estimation The operating temperature in an incinerator is a function of many variables. For most hazardous waste incinerators, the operating temperature is calculated by determining the ame temperature under adiabatic or near-adiabatic conditions. The ame temperature is a function of several variables, with a particularly strong dependence on the excess air requirement and the heating value of the waste. The equation for ame temperature has been derived from the energy balance across the incinerator [7]. By making an energy balance we end up with the Eq. 10 to be solved numerically by any suitable method. F T f 1 PHL=100DH 2 DH 1 0; where F T f DH 3 : Quadratic Equation with respect to T f :
Z DH 1 4:3197m02 st 1 EA=100
T0 Ta

(10)

where Xi mole fraction of the compound i in the product. Writing the system as F(X)=0, where F=(F1,F2, y, F6)t and X=(X1,X2, y, X6)t. Let DXi =X(j+1)Xi(j) ( j is the iteration number); then, i expand Eq. (8) into Taylor series, and neglecting the second-order and higher derivatives, therefore Eq. (9) is obtained. F i qF i =qX 1 DX 1 qF i =qX 2 DX 2 . . . 0 i 1; 2; . . . ; 6: 9 Eq. (9) which is obtained is called Newtons method for system of non-linear equations.

C p air dT:

DH 2 NHV 32620M c 104850 M H 0:125M O

1770:8 M cl 10485 M S : Z DH 3
To Tf

mi cpi dT;

where PHL is the percentage of heat loss, T0 is a reference temperature=25 1C, mi is a mass of product i, cpi is a function of temperature of product i.

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342 Table 3 Chemical composition of ber and shell Parameters Moisture % Ash % Carbon % Hydrogen % Nitrogen % Sulfur % Oxygen % HHV (MJ/kg) Fiber 36.40 05.34 30.02 03.81 00.89 00.19 23.35 19.69 Shell 16.40 02.68 43.80 05.27 00.50 00.17 31.18 20.52 Oil no.6 00.00 00.00 86.60 10.20 00.00 03.20 00.00 44.67 Table 4 Variation of Tf (K) at different excess air % excess air Fiber Shell Oil no. 6 0 1889 2041 2484 25 1676 1781 2104 50 1515 1592 1844 100 1287 1334 1508 150 1132 1163 1296

2.4. Data used Some data about biomass characteristics have been obtained from a research done by two authors [8]. The compositions of biomass that include ber, shell, and commonly used boiler fuel, heavy fuel and are presented in Table 3. It has to be known that EFB which is also waste from plam oil mill, is not included here, because its combustion causes air pollution and has now been banned in some countries and mainly Malaysia [11,12]. The advantage of using the ber and shell as a boiler fuel is that it helps to dispose of these bulky materials which would otherwise contribute to environment pollution [18]. The parameters that are used in the computer program are fuel composition, percent excess air, and temperature of the products. Separately, the temperature of the furnace for each fuel is computed by using Eq. (10) with 2% of heat loss through the furnace.

Fig. 1. Temperature prole for different fuels.

3. Results and discussion In this part, many results are obtained and only the ame temperature is reported in the table. Other results are all shown by graphs at the end of this paper. 3.1. Flame temperature prole The following results for ame temperatures Tf have been obtained at different excess air and are presented in Table 4. It can be seen from Table 4

that the ame temperature for oil No.6 is the highest among ber and shell. This is well understood due to higher heating value of the boiler fuel and the percentage of carbon and hydrogen for oil No.6 is the highest. These results will not reveal that the oil No.6 is the best fuel. There will be other factors, mainly environment, which are going to decide whether the ber and shell is the best fuel for boiler or the oil No.6 will take place. Fig. 1 shows the temperature prole for different fuels. It is observed that the temperature increases with the heat content of the fuel and decreases with an increase in excess air. The National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA) developed a program for ame temperature calculation based upon the JANAF thermodynamic table [9]. Extensive use of this model demonstrates that ame temperature curves are parabolic with respect to excess oxygen and which is seen clearly in Fig. 1. 3.2. CO in the stack gas The concentrations of CO and CO2 are indicative of burning or combustion efciency. Carbon monoxide, CO, is produced due to insufcient

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oxygen and also due to the dissociation phenomena at higher ame temperature. In our study, it is assumed that the POW is well mixed with air and CO is computed mainly due to thermal dissociation of CO2. The presence of CO in the exhaust gases of combustion system results mainly from incomplete fuel combustion, whereas in this paper it was stated that CO is mainly due to dissociation phenomena only, which is an ideal case in comparison to what is found in practice. Indeed, the amount of CO from dissociation of CO2 is very less than that of CO from incomplete combustion. The incomplete combustion is mainly due to [1316]:

practice, the CO is higher than the data in Fig. 2. This is because CO is considered only from thermal dissociation and not from other factors mentioned above. In practice, the amount of CO is of few hundreds parts per million, that is to say 400500 ppm in case the palm oil mill is working efciently without any problem, but in some cases it may reach up to 2000 ppm [17]. 3.3. SOx and NOx in the stack gas When elemental sulfur or a sulfur-bearing compound is present in any combustion system, the predominant product is sulfur dioxide and under fuel-rich concentrations approaching even stoichiometric conditions, practically no SO3 is formed [10]. In other words, the majority of sulfur oxides will be in the form of sulfur dioxide, SO2. Normally less than 2% of the sulfur oxide will be sulfur trioxide, SO3 [10]. Fig. 3 shows that the formation of SO2 with the excess air and its concentration for heavy oil is much higher than any type of POW. Fig. 3 also shows that the concentration of SO2 decreases with an increase in excess air because formation of SO3 occurs which itself arises from the oxidation of SO2. The concentration of NOx is related to ame temperature and percent excess air [6]. According to Fig. 4, NOx concentration is higher for heavy oil due to its higher ame temperature. From Fig. 4 it can be seen that the concentration of NOx from the burning of shell, and ber is increasing with the excess air until approximately 50% of

     

Insufcient oxygen/air. Poor fuel/air mixing. Cold-wall ame quenching. Reduced combustion temperature. Decreased combustion gas residence time. Load reduction, etc.

The greater the amount of air present, and the greater the degree of turbulence, the less carbon monoxide will be formed [9]. From Fig. 2, it is clear that CO generated from burning oil No.6 is very high due to the high ame temperature of that fuel. Also, CO from burning shell is higher than that of ber due to a high ame temperature. Control of airfuel ratio; sufcient mixing of combustion air; control of fuel feeding rate; and optimization of the breshell ratio may reduce the black smoke and particulate emission. In

Fig. 2. CO variation in the stack gas.

Fig. 3. SO2 variation in the stack gas.

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Reference
[1] UN Development Programme. Malaysia biomass-based power generation and cogeneration of the palm oil industry. Project of the Government of Malaysia under United Nations Development Programme, October 2001. [2] Tahir Mohd.A. Inaugural road show on small renewable energy power programme for the palm oil industry. Speech by Dr Abdullah Mohd. Tahir, Minister of Industry at Main Ofce of MPOB 11 March, 2002. [3] Bariron Y, Sivasothy K, Maycock J.H, Ngan Ma Ah. Does cogeneration and alternative energy have a commercially feasible role to play? The palm oil industry experience. proceedings of the seminar on cogeneration and alternative power source in Asia, Kuala Lumpur, 1993. p 411. [4] H-Kittikun A, Prasertsan P, Srisuwan G, Krause A. Environmental management for palm oil mill. Proceedings of the Internet Conference on material ow analysis of integrated bio-systems, (Extracted from abstract), http:// www.ias.unu.edu/proceedings/icibs/ic-mfa/index.html (2000). [5] Hai TC. The palm oil industry in Malaysia: from seed to frying pan. Report by WWF Malaysia, Selangor, Malaysia, November 2002. [6] Harimi M, Abas F. Generation of thermal NOx from the incinerartion of municipal solid waste. Proceedings of world engineering congress, Kuala Lumpur. 1999. p. 44953. [7] Theodore L, Reynolds J. Introduction to hazardous waste incineration. New York, USA: Wiley-Interscience Publication; 1987. p. 199211. [8] Sha A F, Boon K.Y. Instrumentation and control strategies for industrial boilers. Procedure of ENSEARCH conference on instrumentation and the environment, Kuala Lumpur. 12 May 1986. [9] Brunner CR. Incineration systems: selection and design. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company Inc; 1993. p. 116118. [10] Glassman I. Combustion. 3rd ed. California: Academic Press, Inc.; 1996. [11] Stowell G, Tubb V. Maximising energy recovery from palm oil wastes. World palm oil congress, Kuala Lumpur. Bronzeoak Limited; 1999. [12] Prasertsan S, Prasertsan P. Biomass residues from palm oil mills in Thailand: an overview on quantity and potential usage. Biomass and Bioenergy 1996;11(5):38795. [13] Suprenant N.F. et al. Emissions assessment of conventional stationary combustion systems. Gas and oil red residential heating sources, vol. I EPA-600/7-79-029b, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, May 1979. [14] Suprenant N.F. et al. Emissions assessment of conventional stationary combustion systems. Commercial institutional combustion sources, (vol. IV) EPA Contract No. 6802-2197, GCA Corporatioon, Bedford, MA, October 1980.

Fig. 4. Variation of NOx in the stack gas.

excess air than NOx starts to decrease. Normally, NOx is decreasing like heavy oil, but it is does not occur. The reason for this is mainly related to O2 in the composition of POW, since this O2 is not counted in the stoichiometric air calculation. Therefore as percent of excess air increases NOx increases until excess air reaches 50% from which NOx starts to behave as NOx computed from heavy oil. Fig. 4 also shows that the NOx concentration for the incineration of POW is much lower than the heavy oil. Thus, the emission reduction potential for the POW is basically due to the fact that biomass fuel has a low sulfur and nitrogen content compared to heavy fuel.

4. Conclusion Gaseous emissions SOx, NOx and CO generated from burning palm oil waste biomass fuels such as shell and ber are much lower in comparison with heavy fuel. Palm oil biomass energy utilization with improved combustion process on a large scale could signicantly contribute to the national energy requirement, and provide a clean, renewable energy source that could dramatically improve the environment, economy and energy security of the country. At present, cogeneration plant using palm oil waste (ber and shell) is the main focus of the Malaysian government.

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[15] Suprenant N.F. et al. Emissions assessment of conventional stationary combustion systems. Industrial combustion sources, (vol. V) EPA Contract No. 68-02-2197, GCA Corporatioon, Bedford MA, October 1980. [16] Shih C.C. et al. Emissions assessment of conventional stationary combustion systems. External combustion sources for electricity generation, (vol. III) EPA Contract

No. 68-02-2197, TRW, Inc., Redondo Beach, CA, November 1980. [17] Suthum Patumsawad. Fluidised bed combustion of oil palm solid waste. Journal of KMITNB 2002;12(2):1520. [18] Mahlia TMI, Abdulmuin MZ, Alamsyah TMI, Mukhlishien D. An alternative energy source from palm wastes industry for Malaysia and Indonesia. Energy Conversion and Management 2001;42:210918.