No. 341: Production of palm oil-derived fuel in Malaysia (November 2, 2011)

Nippon Steel Engineering will build a plant specially designed for the production of palm oil-derived fuel in Malaysia with an investment of 400-500 million yen. Scheduled to start operation in the spring of 2013, the plant will have an annual production capacity of 3,000 tons. Southeast Asian countries dispose of the residues of palm oil as industrial wastes, but the company will produce environment-conscious fuel using palm oil residues and export it to Japan for the fuel of garbage disposal plants in Japan. The palm oil-derived fuel is called bio-coke. The company will collect empty palm fruit clusters from the palm oil plants in Malaysia, and process them in the plant after drying and heating them.  

Bio-coke can be used as the fuel of gasification melting furnaces for the incineration disposal of municipal solid wastes. A gasification melting furnace usually uses coal cokes as fuel. If bio-coke can replace coal coke, it is possible to eliminate the carbon dioxide emissions from coal cokes. Nippon Steel Engineering shipped a gasification melting furnace to nearly 40 garbage disposal plants in Japan. The price of bio-coke is not yet decided, but it will be between 50,000 and 7,000 yen per ton. The company is the first to address the commercial mass production of bio-coke derived from palm oil. The construction of the special plant is scheduled to start in the spring of 2012.