JAKARTA – Seeing abundant wastes from oil palm trees, Agus Kismanto, the researcher of the Energy Conversion and Conservation Research Center at the National Research and Innovation Board (BRIN), decided to use them as raw material to develop green carbon black, which will be then used to produce carbon black. The carbon black is used for coloring and strengthening car tires, belts, hoses and other non-tire products containing rubber.
It has become a topic of discussions during the two-day monitoring and evaluation of palm oil research grant (Wednesday, Thursday, 10 – 11 January 2024) as part of programs financially supported by the oil palm plantation fund management board (BPDPKS) in the Samaun Samadikun science and technology area of BRIN Bandung.
Agus said that the research was driven by the fact that the oil palm plantations have abundant source of biomass, ranging from palm fronds, empty palm fruit bunches, and palm trunks cut from replanting areas. They are just wasted and not utilized for economic benefits.
“The empty bunches can reach up to 59 million tons per year and if processed into carbon black the waste can result in around 3.0 million tons of carbon black. The research technology for production of carbon black from oil palm biomass is very promising to increase Indonesian exports,” said Agus.
Agus said that the aim of the research is to develop a production technology of carbon black from biomass. It is preceded by the process of biomass pyrolysis to ensure the economics of the production process.
“Carbon black from biomass is a new market, as until now it is only produced by using fossil fuels. It has a bright future as it supports the net zero emissions, which is now prioritized to tackle the climate change problem,” Agus said in his presentation.
According to him, the production technology he proposed is by implementing gasification process of the empty bunches at low temperature, to create syngas and oil pyrolysis or tar. The syngas is then used as fuel in the production process, while the pyrolysis oil is processed into raw material.
“The production of carbon black from the pyrolysis oil is very good as its quality of physical properties is close to that of fossil oil,” he said.
During the first year research, they managed to produce quality carbon black which can be used as a raw material for the tire plants (N770). The technology for preparation of raw material and fuel for carbon black in the form of pyro syngas based on the empty bunches should be soon realized.
“As a further research, we will conduct a research on preparation of raw material for pyro syngas production from the empty palm bunches, research to optimize production in carbon black reactor towards the quality N110, and research of carbon black for harvesting carbon black,” said Agus. (*)
Source: sawitindonesia.com
