No abstract

Empty Fruit Bunches (EFB) are oil palm waste that has the potential as a source of bioenergy because it contains lignocellulose (cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin) so that it can be converted into biofuel through thermal cracking, adsorption, and distillation processes. Thermal cracking is the decomposition of the chemical content of biomass by utilizing heat without a mixture of oxygen at a temperature of 200oC–600oC. This study aims to obtain the characteristics of the raw material of EFB in the form of proximate, ultimate, lignin, and biofuel produced. The research was conducted using a thermal cracking reactor designed to control the temperature at 300oC, 350oC, 400oC, and 450oC. The results showed that the raw material characteristics of EFB from proximate were 13.66% water content, 8.74% ash content, 58.66% volatile matter and 18.90% fixed carbon. This water content is relatively high. This is because the drying process on the material has not run perfectly. The ultimate result showed that the EFB had a C content of 54.45%, H content of 5.00%, and O content of 16.27%. The atomic ratio obtained from the ultimate analysis can indicate the amount of calorific value that can be used for certain fuels. The smaller the atomic ratio value contained, the more significant the calorific value contained in a particular fuel. Klason method was carried out to decrease the level of lignin through 4 stages; the lignin content without delignification was resulting into 24.87%, the addition of aquadest was resulting into18.71%, the addition of 5% HCl resulting into 15.34%, and 10% HCl resulting into 14.49%. Delignification of 10% HCl is the pretreatment process before the thermal cracking. The thermal cracking process forms steam; the steam is then condensed to obtain bio-oil. The formed bio-oil was kept to separate the oil from tar. In order to obtain good biofuel quality, adsorption is carried out with zeolite adsorbent, which has been activated with HCL. A comparison of the physical properties of bio-oil before and after adsorption shows a color difference from brownish black to the adsorbed bio-oil, which is distilled to separate the heavy and light fractions. The temperature of 450oC at thermal cracking is close to optimum; when the temperature is increased, the cracking process will be more straightforward and occur optimally. The biofuel produced in this study was tested for its characteristics such as, density (927-1086.68 Kg/m3), kinematic viscosity (1.17-1.43 mm2/s), and flash point (66.00-70, 23oC). The biofuel product produced is dominated by C5-C15 compounds (45.07%) according to the results of GC-MS analysis.

Empty fruit bunch (EFB) is one of the abundant biomass waste from oil palm and it is an issue that it can be used as renewable energy in the form of Bio-oil. Bio-oil is produced by a thermal cracking process. This research aims to identify the potential environmental impact of Bio-oil production from EFB as fuel. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) with gate to gate approach is used in data processing applications for networks in Simapro V.9 and the database used is similar to the characteristics of the eco invent database. Functional units are used to show environmental references in impact categories, such as energy used and global warming potency. The results show that the stage of the bio-oil production cycle in the pretreatment process has a greater global warming impact than the others, amounting to 131.10013 kg CO2 eq. The results of the analysis using the networking graph on the Simapri, show that the environmental hotspot of the thermal cracking process for Bio-oil production is caused by the use of electricity from the State Electricity Company (PLN) and the release of chemical substances from the process. From the results of the LCA, environmental performance improvement or continuous improvement can be done is by managing energy use and installing equipment.

The aim of the study was to determine the environmental potential impact of the palm shell biofuel production process using life cycle assessment (LCA) through gate to gate approach. The environmental impact of each scenario was assessed using ISO 14040 (2006), which includes goal and scope definition, life cycle inventory (LCI), life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) and interpretation. The simapro v.9 software with ecoinvent 3.5 database was utilized to assess the environmental effect. The impact analysis method used is Impact 2002+. Functional units were used to show environmental references in damage assessment and characterization, such as energy use and global warming potential. The results show that the environmental impact evaluation obtained through LCA for the entire biofuel production process stated that the thermal cracking stage resulted in the highest global warming impact, compared to other processes, which was 118.374 kg CO 2 eq. For the categories of human health, ecosystem quality, and climate change, each has a value of 0.0001 DALY; 15.708 PDF•m 2 •yr; and 335.233 kg CO 2 eq where this value is the total damage assessment of the entire biofuel production process. From the results of the analysis by utilizing the networking graph on the simapro application, it can be seen that the environmental hotspot of the thermal cracking process of biofuel production is due to the use of electricity from the State Electricity Company (PLN) and the release of chemical substances from the process. To improve the environmental performance of biofuel production process, additional development steps are required to increase biofuel yield, purification efficiency of biofuel to obtain pure liquid fuel, and the use of renewable energy sources to generate electricity. Additionally, more particular data would be required for a more precise LCA study result.

The reaction of aluminum (Al) INTRODUCTIONHydrogen is a promising alternative energy for carbon-based fuel substitution. The advantages of hydrogen fuel are free emissions of COx and SOx and its high heating value (HHV = 142 MJ/kg and LHV = 120.2 MJ/kg) or about three times higher than the heating value of gasoline. Gutbier and Hohne (1976) attempted to produce hydrogen through a reaction between magnesium-aluminum and seawater. Soler et al. (2005) reported the reaction of aluminum powder with sodium hydroxide solution (NaOH) produced an optimum yield of hydrogen at temperature of 70-90 o C. However, higher yield was obtained in reacting aluminum with sodium aluminate (NaAlO2) than that of NaOH solution (Soler et al., 2009).