About Activated Carbon

Activated carbon is a common substance used in water treatment. Home use water filtration system or industry use water treatment plant also consist of activated carbon.

Categories of Activated Carbon

There are many organic substances found in nature can be processed and converted to activated carbon. To your surprise, I have seen some activated carbon which made from durian shell. Of course, this is mainly for engineering developing purpose. In common, we know that there are 4 main type of activated carbon substance in Malaysia, namely

Coconut shell base
Palm shell base
Coal base
Peat base

Among these 4 categories, activated carbon made from coconut shell base and palm kernel shell base is highly demanded due to better quality. This is because both shells are given a better absorption rate as well as product hardness. Malaysia does manufacturing both activated carbon, and the products mostly for export purpose.

Coal-based activated carbon is the common categories found in Malaysia. Malaysia is not a country supplying coal, hence, most of the coal base activated carbon are imported from overseas, especially China.

Powder or Granular Form Activated Carbon

Many has come across the question whether what they want to use Granular or Powder form of activated carbon. Again, there is no absolute answer for this question, it is very much depend on the filtration purpose.

In general, granular activated carbon is the most popular and commonly seen in many applications. Especially the mesh size 8*30 is hot sell product. Many water treatment plant use this type of granular activated carbon.

The powder form is less wanted now in the market. This doesn’t mean powder activated carbon has no market. The function for powder form activated carbon has been replaced by the water treatment process. Chemical removal and biological removal methodology are showing remarkable improvement. Many impurities which originally removed by powder type activated carbon has been replaced by chemical and biological removal.

When to use Activated Carbon

The main purpose for activated carbon is to remove tiny impurity which unable to filter via mechanical filter methodology. The porous structure on activated carbon is given the nature for impurity absorption. The absorption capability is very much illustrated by the iodine value of the activated carbon.

Eventhough activated carbon has the best absorption value as compare to other substance, however, in a filtration system, we always apply the activated carbon cartridge at the last station in order for very tiny impurity removal. Those larger size impurity should be removed by filter cartridge and filter bag.

June 3, 2016

Oil Palm Fibre Products and Biomass Commodities

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.

June 6, 2014June 6, 2014

Natural Gas vs. Palm Kernel Shell – Steam Cost

Know that many readers are facing challenge on selecting biomass and natural gas for generating heat or steam gas. This is a never ending debate unless we could specifically compare both commodities side by side within certain criteria.

Natural Gas vs. Palm Kernel Shell Comparison

There are many type of biomass commodities in Malaysia, however we want to minimize the variation and focus on the comparison between natural gas vs. palm kernel shell. Reader could change to other type of biomass instead of palm kernel shell with the same procedure.

Objective for Comparing Natural Gas vs. Palm Kernel Shell

We want to come out a calculation to show the material cost for generating 1000kg of steam between natural gas and palm kernel shell.

Basic Calorific Value for Natural Gas and Palm Kernel Shell

Calorific value is the heat generated during the burning process. The calorific value for natural gas is 35,000kJ/m³, whereby the calorific value for palm kernel shell (PKS) is 4200kJ/kg or 17,640kJ/kg.

We need to move forward to calculate the natural gas and palm kernel shell requires in order generating 1000kg of steam.

Conversion Rate and Efficiency for Natural Gas and Palm Kernel Shell

The conversion rate for Natural Gas is 0.8 whereby the palm kernel shell is only 0.65. In order words, 80% of the natural gas’s calorific value will be used to heat up the steam whereby palm kernel shell only occupied 65% of it calorific value.

Natural gas needs to take up 80m³ in order to heat up 1000kg of steam. On the other hand, you may need up to 200kg of palm kernel shell to heat up 1000kg of steam.

Material Cost Comparison between Natural Gas and Palm Kernel Shell

Now we have better understanding about the natural gas and palm kernel shell consumption in order to produce 1000kg of steam gas. The unit price of natural gas is about RM0.80 whereby palm kernel shell is RM0.20.

With the multiplication, the raw material cost for natural gas is RM64 compare to palm kernel shell RM40.

From the calculation, we know that the biomass system (palm kernel shell) is having 50% lower in term of raw material cost as compare to natural gas.

Hope this calculation could clear up some doubt about the raw material cost comparison between natural gas vs. palm kernel shell. However we haven’t considered the operation cost between these 2 system.

November 28, 2013November 28, 2013

Palm Fibre and Palm Kernel Shell from Malaysia

Malaysia is a resourceful country especially in renewable energy. Many people know Malaysia is rich in underground oil reserves, year-round solar energy, good rainfall and rivers, however biomass energy is often ignored.
In fact, Malaysia is having plenty of resources of biomass energy. Among Biomass resources in Malaysia, crude palm oil industry is generating access biomass resource than trees. Crude Palm Oil industry is producing at least 5 million tons of palm kernel shell and palm fiber each year. These two substances （Palm kernel shell & palm fibre） are the main contribution for biomass energy .

Palm fiber

Fiber is a fluffy substance that also saying need larger space for storage and transporting. Palm fibre should go through compression into bale form in order to increase transport efficiency. However, Malaysian local biomass plant located not very far away from palm oil plant, hence the palm fiber is sent under raw form.
From application stand point, raw palm fiber mostly used as biomass purpose. For other applications , such as long fiber or palm fibre pellet, those products are processed to add value.
The long fibers extract from palm fiber will be sorted out as the material for making palm mattress. And we all know, China is currently the major palm mattress production base. In order to improve the efficiency inshipping, the manufacturer will compress the long fibers into bale form for the convenient shipping process from Malaysia to China. A 20-foot container, it can be fitted with about seven tons of bundled form long fiber.
EFB pallet is another application for short fibre. The fluffy fiber will be squeezed in the EFB pelletizing press machine rollers in order to form a high-density EFB pallet. A well establish press machine is able to produce EFB pallet with diameter of 8mm, and pallet length of 15-20mm. EFB pallet is normally asking for much higher price then the raw form of material, in most cases, the EFB pellet is selling higher price than palm kernel shell. Packing wise, a one ton bags can only load with 700kg of EFB pallet.

Palm kernel shell

As know by many people, the black colour shell from oil palm fruit is the hard shell which we name it as palm kernel shell. Palm kernel shell itself is a high density material . These high density shell , can burn for generating combustion calorific heat about 4,200 kcal / kg. Palm kernel shell is a high density and low moisture product, so it is also act as a natural biomass pallet. In this region, most of the PKS is shipped under raw form.
During transportation, a tonage bag could load around 600kg of palm kernel shell . Palm kernel shell is more favourable for transport under loose form as it will not cause damage. However for EFB pellet, it will break if the handling process is not appropriate. In many case, a EFB pellet will break into shorter pellet size after transportation.
Because of palm kernel shell is not easy to broken features, during transportation, we can ship the PKS under loose form in 20-foot container . Each 20 -foot container can carry up to 19-ton palm kernel shell, this also imply palm kernel shell is more efficiency even shipping under container.

From the perspective of biomass energy, palm kernel shell is one of the favourable biomass commodity. This product is more favourable to transport and providing high calorific value and less moisture. Palm kernel shell is currently the most common biomass energy commodity for exports and overseas market.