Processing Oil Palm Empty Fruit Bunches: Fast Pyrolysis Technology and Water Washing Pre-treatment

The pyrolysis process is an advanced conversion technology that has the ability to produce more useful and valuable pyrolysis liquids in 65-75% yield on dry feed from a wide variety of waste and biomass streams. The oil palm industry in Malaysia produces wastes in large quantities of empty fruit bunch [EFB] after shell and fibre, thus the presence of these oil palm wastes has created a major disposal problem. There are two primary objectives discussed in this book. The first objective is to determine the fast pyrolysis conditions required to maximise the pyrolysis liquid yield from the EFB waste. The second objective is to improve the quality and quantity of pyrolysis liquid by water washing pre-treatment of the EFB prior to pyrolysis. Pre-treatment technique by water washing has been devised with particular emphasis on the removal of ash, which is required to modify the pyrolysis reaction sufficiently to produce homogenous bio-oil. The water washing experiments were designed with the objective to gain a better understanding of the basic factors impacting water washing of EFB that will provide a basis for subsequent techno-economic optimisation.