Thermal behaviour of Torrefied Biochar from oil palm empty fruit bunch (Opefb)

The dependence on fossil fuels as energy source has created a hazardous environment to the global and lead to the environmental pollution for its emission of greenhouse gasses. This phenomenon created awareness and opportunity for the researches to run a research on the utilization of energy sources from renewable energy. Malaysian government has organized a program that could promote renewable energy as the main energy resource to reduce the usage of fossil fuels. Oil palm mills in Malaysia produced abundance of lignocellulosic biomass that is suitable to be utilized as renewable energy sources such as oil palm trunk (OPT), oil palm frond (OPF) and oil palm empty fruit bunch (OPEFB). In this study, OPEFB was used as the biomass renewable energy that undergoes torrefaction process to produce biochar using conventional furnace. Torrefaction is a thermal treatment without presence of oxygen to utilize energy from biomass. The particle size between 250 to 750μm, 200 to 300°C of holding temperature and 30 to 90 minutes residence time are the independent variables that used in this study. After being torrefied, the mass yield (%), proximate properties (%) and energy content (MJ/kg) of torrefied OPEFB was investigated. The optimizations on energy content (MJ/kg) of torrefied OPEFB was analyzed by respond surface method (RSM) using Box-Behnken experimental design to determine the optimum calorific value for torrefied OPEFB biochar. This study observed the thermal behaviour of torrefied OPEFB by using thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) to study the thermal decomposition of raw and torrefied OPEFB.