Parametric Study for Production of Di Methyl Ether (DME) as a Fuel from Palm Wastes

Dimethyl Ether (DME) as one of the second generation of Biofuels can be produce traditionally from the petroleum based feed which involve two steps of production (methanol synthesis from the syngas and DME synthesis from methanol). Recent study shows that DME production process is now possible to be done with biomass as the raw material and single step for DME production process has been developed. In this paper, single step process of DME production was used and simulated using the HYSYS Simulation Software V8.0. Empty Fruit Bunch from palm wastes is the main feed for the process which having four main parts: gasification, water gas shift, CO2 removal and DME Synthesis. In addition, a parametric study was conducted on the DME production process. The results shown that Oxygen to Biomass ratio (O/B) of 0.37 and Steam to Biomass Ratio (S/B) of 0.23 will give a H2/CO feed ratio of 1. Pressure and temperature effect towards the production of DME process was tabulated
and 1000kpa, 140oC respectively were found to be the optimum condition for DME production at H2/CO feed ratio of 1.