Data Driven Technique for Palm Oil Mills Boiler Water Quality Monitoring in State of Perak Malaysia

Abstract

Steam boilers are widely used in oil palm mills industries which physically converting the water into steam. Heating water in the boiler allows solid waste such as potassium, calcium, magnesium, silica and ions to stay in the boiler and creates a solid waste layer that coats the tubes and boilers. This strong coating would increase the heating surface of the boiler and decrease the efficiency of heat transfer. This situation will also increase the consumption of fuel, causing the boiler to overheat, which in turn leads to tube failure. The impact of this issue will cause losses to the oil palm plantation due to the shutdown of unplanned plants. Therefore, for this study, Statistical Process Control (SPC) has been utilized to monitor the quality of the 6 parameters of the boiler and boiler feedwater for palm oil mill in Perak State Malaysia to overcome the problem stated above. Boxplot has been utilized to monitor continuously the parameter based on the probability distribution of the data according to ASME guidelines. The findings from this analysis show that some of the palm oil mills is able to maintain their boiler quality accordingly, however, on controlling the silica, hardness and total iron, its need further improvement.