Techno-economic feasibility of Palm Fatty Acid Distillate (PFAD) blend as alternative to diesel fuel

Abstract

Palm oil had been as fuel in Malaysia with implementation of petroleum diesel and Palm Methyl Ester (PME) blend at 5% in 2014 and mandatory 10% blend in 2019. The high cost of the feedstock is the major drawback of PME. Not only PME comes from expensive low Free Fatty Acid (FFA) feedstock, the cost to convert FFA to PME through the process of transesterification and purification of palm oil fatty acid also expensive. Another feedstock for palm based biofuel is palm fatty acid distillate (PFAD). PFAD is a by-product of crude palm oil (CPO) refining. It is inedible and cheaper compared with other palm oil product thus attractive as a feedstock for biofuel. Five blends of PFAD and diesel with 5%, 10%, 15%, 20% and 25% were produce in this study. The blending was done using magnetic stirrer and was mix continuously for 30 minutes at 60 ∼. The properties of the blends such as density, viscosity, surface tension, pour point and calorific value were determined experimentally. Result from these experiments showed that density, viscosity, surface tension and pour point were increase proportionately when PFAD content increase except for calorific value. The calorific value showed minor reduction with maximum reduction at 3% as compared with diesel fuel. This happen when the PFAD content was at 25% blend. In term of availability of PFAD as biofuel source, data from year of 2016 to 2019 showed that the amount of PFAD produce in Malaysia suffice to support 5% blends of PFAD as biofuel.