Bale form Palm Fibre

Palm fibre has many applications, one of the highly consumed sector is becoming the raw material for mattress. Palm fibre mainly used for biomass purpose now we have explored the market for household application.

How to Retrieve Palm Fibre

After the removing the oil palm fruit, it left over with the empty fruit bunch (EFB). The EFB comes in wet form which is the nature of the palm oil process. The EFB fibre will go through a shredded EFB process for further squeezing out the water and remaining oil content. The shredded EFB will send for drying and separating the the long fibre.

Only the Long Palm fibre is suitable for mattress application. Separating the long fibre and short fibre are very importance process as this going to affect the mattress quality.

Long Palm Fibre before Bale

The long fibre comes in loose form or in fluffy condition. It is very bulky and not effective in shipping process. Compress the long palm fibre into bale form is a mandatory process as this going to help more effective in shipping.

Every company has their own individual bale form dimension. Currently we are adopting the 1.2*0.6*0.8m. Base on our experience, the bale dimension is selected in order to maximize the storage ability in the container.

Once the bale arrived in user premise, the mattress user will unload the bale form long fibre and re-arrange the palm fibre to suit the mattress dimension.

Shipping of Bale form Palm Fibre

Since the palm fibre is mainly for export purpose, the bale form palm fibre is shipped in 40ft container. Every 40ft container will load with 40 bale palm fibre with the total weight 17MT. Loading and unloading the palm fibre in the container is a skill job. We have work from all aspect in order to maximize the loading capacity.

Apply palm fibre in mattress application has becomes a remarkable innovation, currently most of the bale of palm fibre is exported to China. DST is one of the exporter for palm fibre in Malaysia, we never stop our effort to persuade this commodity in other country besides China.

Feel free contact DST about our bale form palm fibre, and we are looking forward to work with you in this field.

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.

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.