Plasma Gasification to Produce Gaseous Fuels from Oil Palm's empty Fruit Bunch

As the title in this project suggests, this project is mainly about using plasma
gasification to produce gaseous fuels from waste biomass. The waste biomass
referred here is the waste biomass that comes from oil palm plantation. Being one
the world largest producer of palm oil, Malaysia generates a huge quantity of oil
palm biomass. In oil palm plantation, only 10% is the finished products; palm oil
and palm kernel oil. The remaining 90% (empty fruit bunches, fibers, fronds,
trunks, kernels, palm oil mill effluent) was discarded as waste, and either burned in
the open air or left to settle in waste ponds. This waste could be converted to useful
gaseous fuels using proper system/process.
The objectives of this project are to do research on plasma gasification and
investigate whether plasma gasification is a feasible choice to produce gaseous fuels
from waste biomass that comes from oil palm plantation. The project is feasible so a
small-scale/ lab scale of the system is made. This system performs the process of
plasma gasification.
For the methodology, this project are completed in a 3-phase method; Extensive
Literature Review, Design and Prototyping, and Experiment and Data Compilation.
In the early stages of this project, literature reviews are done extensively. All details
and information regarding plasma gasification and oil palm waste biomass were
compiled. The type of waste biomass chosen for this project is Empty Fruit Bunch
(EFB).Next, the Design and Prototyping phase. In this stage, the selection of plasma
generator’s type is done first before designing and constructing it. It is very
important to select the most feasible type of plasma generator. In the last phase,
experiments are conducted and the results are validated using FTIR analysis and
CHNS analysis. From there, the analysis will help determine whether plasma
gasification can be used to produce gaseous fuels from oil palm’s empty fruit
bunch.