Particulate Emission from Biomass Fuel Combustion

Abstract

The remarkable growth of palm oil industry in Malaysia is undeniable. Approximately, one million ton of crude palm oil is produced by the industry in a month, thus put Malaysia as one of the largest producer in the world. Most of the mills are operated on cogeneration system, where the biomass residue of palm fibre and shell are used as fuel in the mill boilers mostly to generate steam and also electricity. This practise however produced considerable amount of particulates in terms of fly ash emitting to the environment. Thus, this study is to evaluate the particulate emission from five palm oil mill boilers with steam capacity ranging from 17-35 tonne/h. The results showed that the average particulate emission concentration exiting the stack was 2.21±1.20 g/Nm3 (corrected to 7% oxygen concentration), ranging from 0.42 to 3.77 g/Nm3. The study suggests that the fuel feed rates of fiber and shell was one of the parameters affecting the emission concentration in the boiler. Particulate morphology were also being presented in this study.