PALM OIL INDUSTRY – PALM OIL ENGINEERING BULLETIN

Milling laws

mpob_admin — Sun, 29 Mar 2020 17:13:50 +0000

During process operation there are many basic principles which should be adhered to in order to operate the mill efficiently. Do you know that a large volume of oil is lost in the sludge water simply because the oil filled cells were not ruptured to release oil? The oil extraction rate (OER) of the mill can be raised quite easily if only certain simple procedures are followed. They are now documented under the code of practice (CoP). They are given in Figure 1 in a consecutive order so that it is easy to comprehend the correct flow from upstream to downstream. There are seven of them. Millers have to depend only on one upstream activity, i.e. good estate practice.

Fuel and combustion theory for palm oil industries

mpob_admin — Sun, 29 Mar 2020 17:13:50 +0000

Fuel is vital in palm oil industries to produce steam for electric power generating and heating purposes. Biomass and biogas have been widely utilized in palm oil mills as fuel for renewable energy whereas downstream industries still heavily depend on the fossil fuel as the boiler fuel. Complete combustion is hardly achievable even with excess of air which also causes drop in gross thermal efficiency. The phenomenon of combustion shows that volatile fuel such as methane captured from anaerobic pond is more flammable than solid fuel such as press fibre and shell.

Challenges facing the palm oil industry

mpob_admin — Sun, 29 Mar 2020 17:13:58 +0000

It has been said many times that there will hardly be any drastic change in palm oil milling technology if mills continue to receive and process the FFB in its present form. The experience of past 50 years or so can testify this. However, it is justified to put on record here that there were many incremental improvement and changes in various unit operations, but these were hardly revolutionary in nature. The palm oil mills still rely on the massive heavy and huge steel vessels like sterilizers, cages and threshers to handle the fresh fruit bunch (FFB). Large quantities of steam and water are required to sterilize the FFB, either in full set or crushed form, and to dilute the crude oil slurry for oil recovery in the clarification process. The recent trend to reduce the water usage in the process has not been very encouraging. Most of the water used in the milling process, except the steam blowoff and exhaust-steam, ended up as palm oil mill effluent (POME) which has to be treated to comply with the Department of Environment (DOE) discharge standards.