Syed Shatir A. Syed-Hassan

Life cycle assessment to evaluate the green house gas emission from oil palm bio-oil based power plant

The objective of this study is to assess the green house gas (GHG) emission for the production of bio-oil from oil palm biomass and its utilization for 10 MW power generation by evaluating the life cycle carbon footprint analysis. The life cycle GHG emission assessment includes four main stages, which cover the oil-palm cultivation, palm oil mill operation, biomass transportation and pyrolysis process for the production of bio-oil and its utilization for 10MW power generation. The results obtained suggest that the palm bio-oil has potential as a carbon neutral renewable energy source in the future. More importantly, it has no negative impact on the environment as the amount of CO2 emitted to the atmosphere during combustion of this fuel is lower than that of the CO2 absorbed from the atmosphere during cultivation stage.

Adsorption and Dispersion of Nickel on Oil Palm Mesocarp Fiber

The investigation on the adsorption of metal from aqueous solution onto a biomass is important for several reasons. First, biomass has been widely used as an economical sorbent to remove heavy metals from industrial wastewater. Second, studies have shown that impregnation of metals onto a biomass helps improving thermal conversion of the biomass, for example, by reducing the yields of tar and char and thus enhancing the formation of syngas during biomass gasification. The produced metal-loaded char from thermal conversion of metal impregnated-biomass on the other hand, can be re-used as a catalyst for various reactions such as water-gas shift reaction. In this study, we examine the adsorption of Nickel from aqueous solution onto oil palm mesocarp fiber by varying important parameters such as pH and initial metal concentration. The kinetic study shows that the adsorption of Nickel follows the pseudo-second order kinetic model. Our study also reveals that Nickel disperses well into nano-size particles on the oil palm mesocarp fiber, suggesting the suitability for carrying out thermal conversion of Nickel-loaded oil palm mesocarp fiber in the future. The adsorption of Nickel is lower but sufficient enough to be used as catalyst in biomass thermochemical processes.

Optimization of the preparation of activated carbon from palm kernel shell for methane adsorption using Taguchi orthogonal array design

The preparation of activated carbon from palm kernel shell for methane adsorption was studied. Taguchi orthogonal array design was employed to optimize the preparation of activated carbon. The statistical results show that the optimized conditions are the impregnation ratio of 0.55, the activation temperature of 900 °C and the activation time of 150min. The impregnation ratio has the most influence on methane adsorption based on S/N ratio analysis. The mathematical model was developed using regression analysis as a function of independent variables. The results of experiment using optimum conditions fall within the predicted value obtained from the developed model. Activated carbon prepared at optimum conditions which have the highest BET surface area of 1,548.0m2/g and the total pore volume of 1.0 cm3/g recorded the highest methane uptake compared to other conditions. The equilibrium data of the adsorption characteristic fitted favourably to the Freundlich isotherm.

An Investigation into the Combustion of Mixed Fuel Consisting of Bituminous Coal and Crude Bio-oil

The combustion of bituminous coal, bio-oil, and their slurry mixtures were performed under air atmosphere using Thermogravimetric Analyzer (TGA). All samples were run from room temperature to 110°C and held for 10 minutes before the temperature was ramped to 1100°C and held again for 10 minutes at 1100°C at the heating rate of 10°C/min and gas flow rate of 50mL/min. Kinetic evaluation was conducted using a simple Arrhenius-type kinetic model with first-order decomposition reaction. Apparent activation energy, Ea, and pre-exponential factor, A, were calculated from the modelling equation. Results reveal that the reactivity of CBS fuel is higher than a single coal fuel to which the addition of bio-oil helps to increase the combustion performance of the blends. The optimum fuel ratio appears at 50:50 ratio with equal contribution of coal and bio-oil properties that contribute to the increase in volatile matter causing maximum combustion rate achievable at much lower temperature compared to single coal fuel.

Adsorption Capacity of Nickel (II) and Cobalt (II) Ions from Aqueous Solutions by Oil Palm Waste and Sawdust

Four types of biomass were characterized to investigate its metal adsorption capacity. The biomass were soaked in with nickel and cobalt solutions to examine the effect of biomass to amount of metal adsorbed. Oil palm mesocarp fibre (OPMF), empty fruit bunch (EFB), palm kernel shell (PKS) and sawdust were used in this study. Among all the biomass studied, oil palm mesocarp fibre shows the highest adsorption capacity with 1.8 mg/g and 1.6 mg/g of nickel and cobalt uptake, respectively. The metals adsorbed on the biomass were found to disperse into nanosize range.

Thermal behaviour of slurry prepared from clermont bituminous coal and oil palm empty fruit bunch bio-oil

Investigation on the pyrolysis behaviour of coal-biooil slurry (CBS) fuel prepared at different ratios (100:0; 70:30; 60:40;0: 100) were conducted using a Thermogravimetric Analyzer (TGA). The selected coal sample was Clermont bituminous coal (Australia), while Empty Fruit Bunch (EFB) was used as source of bio-oil that was thermally converted by means of pyrolysis. Thermal degradation of CBS fuel was performed in an inert atmosphere (50mL/min nitrogen) under non-isothermal conditions from room temperature to 1000°C at heating rate of 10°C/min. The proportions of CBS fuel at 70:30 and 60:40 blends were observed to have influenced the fuel properties of the slurry. The addition of bio-oil will shift the temperature region towards early devolatilization. Meanwhile, the thermal profiles of the blends, showed potential trends that followed the characteristics of an ideal slurry fuel where highest degradation rate was found at the blend ratio of 60:40 biooil/coal. These findings can be useful to the development of a slurry fuel technology for application in the vast existing conventional power plants.

Effect of Pretreatment on Adsorption of Nickel by Oil Palm Mesocarp Fiber

In this study, the usage of abundantly available oil palm mesocarp fiber as biosorbent for nickel removal from aqueous solution is discussed. The effect of NaOH and HCl pretreatment on the nickel removal by oil palm mesocarp fiber is one of the objectives. Varieties of NaOH concentration were examined to determine the effect of concentration on nickel removal. Other than pretreatment, effect of initial nickel concentration is also determined. XRD analysis was done in order to proof the existence of nickel phase on the oil palm mesocarp fiber. From the result, oil palm mesocarp fiber treated with NaOH results in higher nickel adsorption compared with the treatment using HCl and the nickel nitrate phases was successfully attached on the oil palm mesocarp fiber with crystalline size between 28-52 nm.

Fuel properties of bituminous coal and pyrolytic oil mixture

Investigation on the thermal decomposition kinetics of coal-biooil slurry (CBS) fuel prepared at different ratios (100:0,70:30,60:40,0:100) was conducted using a Thermogravimetric Analyzer (TGA). The materials consisted of Clermont bituminous coal (Australia) and bio-oil (also known as pyrolytic oil) from the source of Empty Fruit Bunch (EFB) that was thermally converted by means of pyrolysis. Thermal decomposition of CBS fuel was performed in an inert atmosphere (50mL/min nitrogen) under non-isothermal conditions from room temperature to 1000°C at heating rate of 10°C/min. The apparent activation energy (Ea.) and pre-exponential factor (A) were calculated from the experimental results by using an Arrhenius-type kinetic model which first-order decomposition reaction was assumed. All kinetic parameters were tabulated based on the TG data obtained from the experiment. It was found that, the CBS fuel has higher reactivity than Clermont coal fuel during pyrolysis process, as the addition of pyrolytic oil will...