Abstract
It has been a necessary option for most developing countries moving towards renewable energy options as part of the Paris Agreement, which minimizes conventional energy sources’ reliance. In Malaysia, biomass is a profitable renewable option compared to solar and hydro sources for energy production due to the abundance of agricultural biomass availability for immediate use. However, most of the biomass power plants in Malaysia depend on empty fruit bunch as fuel, causing problems when there is a shortage of fuel supply and other circumstances. Variations in the fuels’ properties provide a new challenge to the power plant output; however, mixing biomass fuels can overcome the issue. Hence, this article aims to study the empty fruit bunch (EFB) with other abundant biomass fuels like “palm kernel shell (PKS),” “rice husk (RH),” and “coconut shell (CS)” for biomass boiler fuel. Therefore, the biomass’s composition and characteristics need to be known, which was done through the proximate analysis (PA), ultimate analysis (UA), and high heating value (HHV). As a result of PA, UA, and HHV, RH is the least favourable fuel due to lowest ((moisture (4.92%), volatile matter (63.20%), carbon (42.50%), hydrogen (5.42%), nitrogen (0.43%) and sulphur (0.01%)) and highest ash content (18.19%), whereas CS exhibits the most favourable option with highest (carbon (50.25%) and oxygen (42.57%)) and second highest in HHV (20.53%) compared with PKS. Thus, the experiments have provided the least and highest favourable feedstock ratios option for biomass boiler fuel application.
Highlights
Increasing awareness of the sustainable environmental values has made it acceptable that conventional fossil fuel dependence causes high environmental impacts resulted in greenhouse gas emission issues (GHG), carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, and environmental pollution [1]
From the experiment of the proximate analysis of the four biomass specimens, it has been proven that the decomposition of these biomass materials can be split into three stages; 1) starts with the desorption whereby the weight of the selected biomass material undergoes rapid initial mass loss due to moisture evaporation, 2) followed by decomposition of hemicelluloses of the sample [42], and 3) volatilization on the third stage and char combustion with lignin and cellulose decomposition subsequently by lignin degradation [42]
The temperature range of particular stages was associated with the deterioration of the biomass elements, and this range was resolved to utilize the limit temperature comparing with the neighbour minimums on the DTG graph [43]
Summary
Increasing awareness of the sustainable environmental values has made it acceptable that conventional fossil fuel dependence causes high environmental impacts resulted in greenhouse gas emission issues (GHG), carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, and environmental pollution [1]. In the year 2017, 77.5% of fossil fuel has been utilized, which increased by 13.9% compared with the year 2012, whereby only 68% of the world’s electricity generation depended essentially on petroleum derivatives, as per the IEA [4] These energy sources, incorporate 25.9% coal, 21.2% natural gas, and 30.4% oil, and the rest comprises of 22.6% collectively as in biofuels & waste, hydropower, nuclear power and others, such as “wind, solar PV, solar thermal, and geothermal” which has been shown separately in the below Figure 1 [4]. These mentioned figures are proof of dependency on fossil sources that arise from day to day as the electricity demand increases, in developing nations
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