Dry and wet torrefaction of empty fruit bunch to produce clean solid fuel for cooking application

Abstract

Empty fruit bunch (EFB) is one of the biomass source in Indonesia which has abundant availability generated from palm oil industry. The aim of the present work is to study the dry and wet torrefaction of EFB in a fixed bed reactor for green energy production in a cooking application. The feedstock used in these experimental works was empty fruit bunch. The collected EFB has a high moisture content which was then dried in the sun for three days in order to remove some the water content. The samples were then crushed into smaller particle size to made it easily put into the reactor. The results showed that the higher the reaction temperature and holding time, the lower the solid yields. The dry torrefaction of EFB can produce around 34-91% of the solid product. The results also showed that increasing the dry torrefaction temperature resulted in the increase of heating value. Wet torrefaction has the similar trend with the dry torrefaction. The solid product from wet torrefied EFB which can be obtained is in the range of 64-83%. Dry torrefied EFB produced higher energy yield than that of wet torrefied EFB. The difference reaction medium, temperature, and pressure resulted in different energy yield.