Indonesia's Palm Oil Waste Holds Key to Huge Biogas Potential
Indonesia has significant potential to develop biogas from palm oil waste into a new energy source and value-added business, according to industry experts.
The country's palm oil mill effluent (POME) waste reaches around 125 million tons per year, with the national biogas production estimated at 3.6 billion cubic meters per year, said Tungkot Sipayung, Executive Director of the Palm Oil Agribusiness Strategic Policy Institute (PASPI).
Each ton of fresh fruit bunches (FFB) can produce around 0.5 tons of POME, and through methane capture technology, each ton of POME has the potential to produce around 28.8 cubic meters of biogas.
The biogas produced can be used for power plants, factory energy needs, employee housing, and community energy needs, with the potential to also be purified into bio-compressed natural gas (bio-CNG) for use as fuel for vehicles and local industrial needs.