Improving sustainability and circularity of palm oil by anaerobic digestion of waste streams, enabling self-sufficient energy production from biogas
Colombia is the leading producer and exporter of palm oil in Latin America, and a large supplier of this product for the Netherlands. The country allocates almost 500.000 hectares of its soil to oil palm cropping, which accounts for 7% of its agricultural GDP. Currently, the biomass resulting from palm oil production is burned for producing steam, but still the carbon footprint of this industry can be reduced while increasing the (economic) profits.
Aiming at reducing the greenhouse gas emissions and operation costs of oil palm mills, a more circular set up for this industry was researched by Wageningen Food & Biobased Research (WFBR) in close collaboration with Cenipalma in order to make a more efficient use of this value chain’s resources.
Optimizing the circular set-up of the oil palm processing mill and the use of mill residues
The project focused on redesigning the mill by switching from burning burning mesocarp fibre (MF) and palm shell for production of steam to using biogas produced from palm oil mill effluent (POME), Empty Fruit Bunches (EFB), and MF as the main energy source for the mill. The digestate is then returned to the field, thereby recycling the nutrients and recalcitrant biomass to the soil. The saved MF and shell can be sold for other uses such a energy production (saving coal) or material applications such as cellulose production and lignin (for asphalt production). Increasing biogas production from EFB and MF by steam treatment was tested. The production of biogas was sufficient to generate enough energy for running the mill. Cenipalma partner conducted part of the experiments in the Netherlands.
In the document available below you can find a poster summarising the project goals, data, analysis and conclusions found from this collaborative research.