Through-out our discussion with many readers, we come across several oil palm by products which causing ambiguity to some reader.  Over here, we would like to differentiate below few commodities so that we could be clearer what the commodity we need.

By-product of Palm Oil Process

• EFB. EFB stands for Empty Fruit Bunch.  This refers to the raw bunch with no process.  The EFB from the oil palm mill always comes in wet form.  It also consists of small percent of oil which could be extracted further.  The fibre in EFB is very long.
• Shredded EFB. The wet form EFB will send for press and shredded process, the product named as shredded EFB.  The shredded EFB still under wet form but the access water content has been squeezed out!  The oil content also being squeezed during this process.  After the shredded process, the core of the EFB will tear into shorter form, at this moment, the fibre extract from shredded EFB with the range 100-200mm length.
• Long Fibre. Long fibre is the fibre extract from shredded EFB.  The fibre is more coarse and long than other part of oil palm fibre.  In most cases, the long fibre is always packed under bale form for export purpose.
• Short Fibre. Short fibre is the residue fibre from palm fibre process.  Manufacturer will screen out the long fibre and the short fibre is the left over from the process.  Besides the length, short fibre is having very close characteristic as long fibre as they are going through similar process.  Short fibre moisture maintains at the range 12-15%, it is the best condition and raw material process to EFB pellet.
• Mesocarp fibre. This is the fibre extract from the oil palm fruit.  The mesocarp fibre is short in nature however it is not same as short fibre as we explain in early section.  Because the mesocarp fibre is the fibre direct extract from the oil palm fruit, the fibre is length is about 20mm or shorter.  But the diameter is finer and much oily as compare to the short fibre retrieve from shredded EFB.

In Malaysia, there are many people trade the above commodities or oil palm by-product.  DST is one of the companies involved in above commodities for more than 10 years.   With above explanation about the terms, we hope that it will be better for everyone to communicate toward the same biomass commodity.

There are much more oil palms by product available besides the above commodities such as palm kernel, decanter cake, etc.  However over this article we only discuss some related to fibre category.  In future, we may talk more on other commodities.