오일팜 바이오매스의 자원화 연구 III - 오일팜 바이오매스의 반탄화 연구 -

Abstract

Renewable Portfolio Standards(RPS) is a regulation that requires a renewable energy generated fromeco-friendly energy sources such as biomass, wind, solar, and geothermal. The RPS mechanism generallyis an obligatory policy that places on electricity supply companies to produce a designated fractionof their electricity from renewable energies. The domestic companies to supply electricity largely relyon wood pellets in order to implement the RPS in spite of undesirable situation of lack of wood resourcesin Korea. This means that the electricity supply companies in Korea must explore new biomass as an alternativeto wood. Palm kernel shell (PKS) and empty fruit bunch (EFB) as oil palm wastes can be usedas raw materials used for making pellets after their thermochemical treatment like torrefaction. Torrefaction is a pretreatment process which serves to improve the properties including heating valueand energy densification of these oil palm wastes through a mild pyrolysis at temperature typically rangingbetween 200 and 300℃ in the absence of oxygen under atmospheric pressure. Torrefaction of oilpalms wastes at above 200℃contributed to the increase of fixed carbon with the decrease of volatile matters,leading to the improvement of their calorific values over 20.9 MJ/kg (=5,000 kcal/kg) up to 25.1MJ/kg (=6,000 kcal/kg). In particular, EFB sensitively responded to torrefaction because of its physical properties like fiber bundles, compared to PKS and hardwood chips. In conclusion, torrefaction treatmentof PKS and EFB can greatly contribute to the implement of RPS of the electricity supply companiesin Korea through the increased co-firing biomass with coal.