Utilization of oil palm as a source of renewable energy in Malaysia

Abstract

Malaysia is currently the world's largest producer and exporter of palm oil. Malaysia produces about 47% of the world's supply of palm oil. Malaysia also accounts the highest percentage of global vegetable oils and fats trade in year 2005. Besides producing oils and fats, at present there is a continuous increasing interest concerning oil palm renewable energy. One of the major attentions is bio-diesel from palm oil. Bio-diesel implementation in Malaysia is important because of environmental protection and energy supply security reasons. This palm oil bio-diesel is biodegradable, non-toxic, and has significantly fewer emissions than petroleum-based diesel (petro-diesel) when burned. In addition to this oil, palm is also a well-known plant for its other sources of renewable energy, for example huge quantities of biomass by-products are developed to produce value added products such as methane gas, bio-plastic, organic acids, bio-compost, ply-wood, activated carbon, and animal feedstock. Even waste effluent; palm oil mill effluent (POME) has been converted to produce energy. Oil palm has created many opportunities and social benefits for the locals. In the above perspective, the objective of the present work is to give a concise and up-to-date picture of the present status of oil palm industry enhancing sustainable and renewable energy. This work also aims to identify the prospects of Malaysian oil palm industry towards utilization of oil palm as a source of renewable energy.

Introduction

The oil palms (Elaeis guineensis) comprise two species of the Arecaceae, or palm family. Mature trees are single-stemmed, and grow up to 20 m tall. The leaves are pinnate, and reach between 3 and 5 m long. The flowers are produced in dense clusters; each individual flower is small, with three sepals and three petals. Unlike, the coconut palm, the oil palm does not produce offshoots; propagation is by sowing the seeds. The fruit takes 5–6 months to mature from pollination to maturity; it comprises an oily, fleshy outer layer (the pericarp), with a single seed (kernel), also rich in oil [1]. Oil palms are commonly used in commercial agriculture in the production of palm oil.

The oil palm is a tropical palm tree therefore it can be cultivated easily in Malaysia. The oil palm tree in Malaysia originated from West Africa where it was growing wild and later developed into an agricultural crop. The first commercial oil palm estate in Malaysia was set up in 1917 at Tennamaran Estate, Selangor [2], [3]. Picture 1, Picture 2, Picture 3, Picture 4 show the palm tree and its accessories. The palm tree and palm fruit are shown in Picture 1, Picture 2, whereas Picture 3, Picture 4 show the oil palm biomass and palm oil mill effluent (POME). The pictures are courtesy of United Oil Palm Sendirian Berhad, Nibong Tebal, Pulau Pinang.

The growth of the industry has been phenomenal and Malaysia is now the largest producer and exporter of palm oil in the world, accounting for 52% or 26.3 million tonnes (MnT) of the total world oils and fats exports in year 2006. With the increasing demand of world vegetable oil for example from 58.8 MnT in year 1991/1992 to 109.2 MnT in year 2005 and to 137.9 MnT in year 2006, Malaysia will be one of the major contributors of world vegetable oil in near future. Fig. 1 shows the types of vegetable oil used throughout the world and their demand in percentage for the year 2005 [4], [5], [6], [7]. It shows that palm oil accounts the highest percentage of demand comparatively to other types of oil in the world. Table 1 shows the comparative values of world palm oil production to other types of oil for the year 2006 [8].

Oil palm is the highest yielding oil crop, producing on average about 4–5 tonnes of oil/ha/year, about 10 times the yield of soybean oil [9]. Soybean oil was a distant second at 19%. Palm oil demand was significantly increased by 10.6% to 33.17 MnT in year 2006. Both palm and soybean oils combined, govern almost 48% of global oils and fats consumption in year 2006. Palm oil itself contributes about 33% of the world vegetable oil demand [7], [10]. In terms of the world market, both Malaysia and Indonesia account for 90% of the palm oil world export trade and will likely remain the key players in the palm oil sector, accounting for 28.5 MnT or 85% of the world's palm oil production. This numbers can be clearly verified in Fig. 2 [10].

It was forecasted that in years to come, the demand will be higher with the increasing demand of world total oils and fats. Table 2 shows the forecasted projected production of palm oil for the year 2000–2020 in MnT [8] for the two major world palm oil contributor.

It is already very profitable to invest in the industry of oil palm in Malaysia even using existing technology; as a result it enhances the plantation of oil palm in Malaysia. Malaysia contributes about 10% of the global oils and fats utilizing only 4 million ha of land, which corresponds to 1.84% of the world's total 219 million ha of oilseeds [10], can produce a gigantic 11% of the global vegetable oils extensively when compared to its planting area size. Therefore plantation of oil palm tree in Malaysia has been boasted significantly in the recent years and Fig. 3 proves this.

Fig. 3 shows that only about 38,000 ha of land have been used in 1950, whereas 4,050,000 ha have been used in year 2005 for oil palm plantation [11]. The oil palm currently yields an average of 3.7 MnT/ha of oil/year, which is 2.5 times higher than rapeseed and about seven times more than soy. This attests that the utilization of oil palm as a source of energy is certainly increasing. Malaysian oil palm can be used to produce many other downstream oleo-chemical products such as soap, palm fatty acids, palm methyl esters and many more. Apart from that, huge quantities of biomass by-products such as empty fruit bunch (EFB) fibers, shells, fronds, and trunk are also produced. These biomasses can be converted into many value added product. Hence the objective of this paper will be outlining the contributions of oil palm's by products as well as its oil as a source of renewable and sustainable energy.