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Oil Palm Residue Could Solve Food vs. Biofuel Debate
Ismira Lutfia | August 21, 2011

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didikarjadi
9:21am Aug 21, 2011

It changes nothing. Greedy billionaires will still be cutting down our forests with collaboration from corrupt forestry officials. No benefit for ordinary Indonesians, just an excuse to destroy our forests completely.

What is happening here is part of the greatest crime against the human race that there has ever been. I have no doubt in my mind that what is being sanctioned today by corrupt politicians and carried out by evil companies, will bring death to billions of people across the Planet. Indonesia will become a wasteland, and life as we know it today will not exist.

I am also sympathetic to a theory that eventually, after all attempts to reverse the destruction of the Worlds great forests have failed, when people are really gasping for air, some countries will take up arms against those countries who are continuing the destruction, and force compliance.

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The millions of tons of fibrous residue produced by palm oil plantations across the country could soon become a major source of raw material for renewable fuel.

Over the past year, scientists from the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) and Seoul’s Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) have been working on a joint project to turn a waste product into a viable alternative energy resource.

By next year, the scientists are optimistic that the pilot plant and research lab built for the project in the Research Center for Science and Technology (Puspiptek) in Serpong, Banten, can start regular production of bioethanol from the leftover parts of the oil palm plant.

“This is the first project of its kind in Indonesia and we have set a pilot production target of 10 liters of bioethanol per day by 2012,” said Yanni Sudiyani, the chief researcher for bioethanol and biomass at LIPI .

The output, she added, would be high-grade ethanol that could be used as an alternative energy source for vehicles.

“We aim to run pilot tests on our bioethanol’s compatibility with actual vehicles by 2014,” said Zalinar Udin, head of LIPI’s Research Center for Chemistry.

The project was conceptualized in 2005, and the research started with support from the state budget in 2007. In 2010, LIPI secured a cooperation agreement with KOICA, which provided the $2.2 million research lab and $500,000 pilot plant equipment.

Hyung Keun Song, a scientist from the Korea Institute of Science and Technology, said the first group of South Korean experts were sent to Indonesia in August last year.

“The goal of our cooperation is to establish a research lab to produce bioethanol from Indonesian bioresources, to conduct research on bioethanol from inedible bioresources and to construct a pilot plant,” Hyung said.

Indonesia has already been producing biofuel from jatropha and cassava, but, according to Yanni, there is a problem with cassava supply, since it is also used for food.

This food-versus-fuel battle has been at the heart of the debate on biofuels, which might otherwise be preferable over non-renewable and heavily polluting fossil fuels.

According to Haznan Abimanyu, a chemist from LIPI’s Research Center for Chemistry, Indonesia’s biodiversity offers a wealth of crops that can potentially be used to produce biofuels to help meet the skyrocketing demand for energy amid the ever-looming depletion of fossil fuels.

“Bioenergy can be produced from plants, either through the conversion of plant oils or by the fermentation of sugar, starch or cellulose,” he said.

Some of the edible sources of biofuel include sago, cassava and corn, Haznan said. There are roughly 3.2 million hectares of sago palms in Indonesia. Sago grows in swampy areas, and is common in Papua and Sulawesi.

Haznan said one ton of sago could produce 160 liters of bioethanol, and one ton of corn could produce 200 liters. Indonesia grows 14 million tons of corn a year.

But given the controversy over using edible resources such as cassava, corn and sago for fuel, LIPI’s Zalinar said they had to look elsewhere.

“So we looked for non-food material such as oil palm residue, which is abundantly available in the country, being the world’s largest palm oil producer,” she said.

The oil palm residue has high cellulose content, Zalinar said, which can be processed into liquid glucose that would be fermented to serve as the basic material for bioethanol.

To be sure, Indonesia is by no means the first country to produce what is referred to as second-generation biofuels from oil palm residue. Malaysia, the world’s No. 2 palm oil producer, began producing it a few years back.

But its proponents are optimistic about the future of the project and the biofuel industry in general in Indonesia.

LIPI’s Yanni said 150 liters of low-quality bioethanol could be produced from every ton of oil palm residue.

With 15 million tons of crude palm oil produced in Indonesia each year, there is certainly plen ty of waste available for bioetha nol production.

Bioethanol generally burns more cleanly than fossil fuels, which are contaminated with sulfur and other pollutants, and does not produce irritant particles as do fuels such as diesel.

Bioethanol does, however, produce more ozone pollutants than fossil fuels, which contributes to photochemical smog.

LIPI estimates that bioethanol use in Indonesia would reduce pollution emissions by 19 percent to 25 percent over those generated by current fossil fuels.

Indonesia also has the potential to produce biofuel from bagasse — the fibrous matter that remains after sugarcane is processed. With around 230 million tons of bagasse produced per year, Haznan said it could be developed into 17,618 billion liters of bioethanol per year.