Preliminary Design Of Palm Oil Frond Gasifier

This report is emphasizing on designing a gasifier that utilizes the palm oil frond as
the carbonaceous feed material. Gasifier is the reactor where the gasification process
occurs to produce combustible gas for power generation application.
Malaysia is one of the largest palm oil producing countries in the world and there are
large amounts of palm oil tree waste especially the frond and leaves produced
Currently, the waste such as the frond are not been managed well and disposed in
uncontrolled manner. To treat this tremendous biomass waste, gasification can be the
way to convert the waste to be an alternative energy, in the form of combustible gas
called producer gas or syngas.
The methodology of the project is to plan and clarify the task to be done, followed by
research on the project through literature review, determine the characteristic and
thermal behavior of palm oil frond through material testing and lastly design the
gasifier based on the characteristics of the frond. The gasifier with feed consumption
of 150 kg/h is designed since the gasifier is required to produce medium scale of
power generation in the range of 50 to 200 kW.
The palm oil frond gasifier has total dimension of 0.8 m in diameter and 2.5 m in
height. The construction material for the gasifier is 5mm thick stainless steel and the
insulation is made of rock wool. The producer gas produced is approximately 531.62
m3 h 1 .The gasifier can generate power capacity of 166.32 kW with 70% of
gasification efficiency and has total gasifier system efficiency of 20.9%.