Options for Environmental Sustainability of the Crude Palm Oil Industry in Thailand Through Enhancement of Industrial Ecosystems

Abstract

The crude palm oil industry plays an important role in the economic development of Thailand and in enhancing the economic welfare of the population. Despite obvious benefits of this industrial development, it also significantly contributes to environmental degradation, both at the input and the output sides of its activities. On the input side, crude palm oil mills use large quantities of water and energy in the production process. On the output side, manufacturing processes generate large quantities of wastewater, solid waste/by-products and air pollution. Current industrial wastes and recoverable materials are empty fruit bunches, fibers, shells and ash. It is estimated that in 2003, a total of 2.1 million ton of solid wastes/by-products and 2.5 million m 3 of wastewater were generated. The concept of the industrial ecosystem points at the potential of industrial waste recycling resembling food chains, food webs and nutrient cycles of nature. Following the notion of industrial ecology crude palm oil mills can develop a number of waste recycling and reuse systems. This paper analyzes the nature of these industrial ecosystems, divided in in-plant ecosystems (clean technology options) and external waste exchange between crude palm oil industries and other economic activities in Thailand.

Physicochemical Characterization of Oil Palm Decanter Cake (OPDC) for Residual Oil Recovery

“…Many researchers have studied the suitability of OPDC as animal feed (Chavalparit et al 2006), fertilizer, and composting material, due to its high nutrient content (Ramli et al 2012;Razak et al 2012), its ability to be used as a source of biogas production (Kaosol and Sohgrathok 2012), and the potential use of pyrolyzed OPDC as an adsorbent for the removal of metal ions from wastewater (Dewayanto et al 2010). Currently, most of the mills in Malaysia use OPDC as animal feed and composting materials for the plantation.…”

Energy Self-Sufficiency of Semi-Mechanized Oil Palm Processing: A Case Study of Bayelsa Palm Mill, Elebele, Nigeria

“…The remaining process uses heat or electrical energy for processing. In countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia, 14.5 -25 kWh of electricity is required to process 1 tonne of FFB (Mahlia et al, 2001;Chavalparit et al, 2006;Yusoff, 2006;Ohimain and Izah, 2014). Excess biomass from palm oil mills in Malaysia is converted into fuel/power via gasification, pyrolysis and direct combustion using small and modular systems.…”

“…The processing of fresh fruit bunch (FFB) of oil palm generates between 10 and 30% of palm oil (Prasertsan and Prasertsan, 1996;Mahlia et al, 2001;Chavalparit et al, 2006;Hambali et al, 2010;Ohimain et al, 2013a) depending on the variety and bunch size. The quantity of solid waste generated form processing mills has been variously reported in literature.…”

“…Ohimain et al (2013a) reported the material-mass balance of smallholder oil palm processors in Nigeria. Other country mass balance report includes Thailand (Prasertsan and Prasertsan, 1996;Chavalparit et al, 2006) Indonesia (Hambali et al, 2010) and Indonesia/Malaysia (Mahlia et al, 2001). The palm oil extraction method is either wet or dry milling techniques.…”

The impacts and opportunities of oil palm in Southeast Asia: What do we know and what do we need to know?

“…With a combination of reuse, recycling, using solid and liquid wastes, and appropriate energy management, the CPO industry can achieve almost zero pollution discharge, making it an environmentally friendly industry (Chavalparit et al 2006). (See also 'Mills and water quality' in Chapter 6.…”