Biomass can be converted to gaseous fuel through gasification and supercritical water gasification process by means of thermal methods. Various gasifying agents such as oxygen, air or steam can be utilised. The supercritical water gasification process occurs at temperature more than 374°C and 220 atm. This process is suit­able for biomass with moisture content more than 50%. Product gas comprised of H2, CO, CO2 and CH4 . The formation of tar and char is less with gasification efficiency of almost 100%. This technology is still in developing stage (Kelly-Yong et al. 2007). Typical gasifier is suitable for biomass with moisture content <30%. Operating condition is around 800-900°C and at atmospheric pressure. Various types of gasifier configuration can be found industrially. Examples are for fixed bed with either downdraft or updraft mode of contacting, and for fluidised bed system, the flow behaviour is either bubbling or circulating mode (Hofbauer et al. 2003). Recent advancement in this area is introduction of Absorption Enhance Reforming

Superheater

Fig. 3.1 Schematic diagram of lab-scale steam gasification system that is able to produce hydrogen-rich gas using in situ CO2 sorbent. In addition, Khan et al. (2011a, b) have investigated the effect of steam and catalyst on palm oil wastes using in situ catalytic adsorption for conversion to H2 . The maximum H2 content obtained is up to 64 mol% for palm shell, and utilisation of steam as gasify­ing agent has increased H2 content by 28%, and further increased in H2 content by 12.5% is observed when catalyst is introduced to the system. The following para­graph highlights a case study for H2 production from oil palm biomass.

The biomass steam gasification experiments were performed in a standard TGA (EXSTAR TG/DTA 6300, from SII) and GC (Agilent 7890A, Agilent Technologies) under non-isothermal conditions as shown in Fig. 3.1. For all experiments, biomass sample weight was ~5 mg. N2 was used as inert carrier gas with a constant flow rate of 100 ml/min.

The micro vacuum pump (650 mmHg was applied throughout the experiments) was attached to the GC to facilitate gaseous product from TGA. Super heater up to 400°C generated steam prior to injection in TGA. The system was purged with N2 gas (100 ml/min) for about 20 min to remove entrapped gases at temperature of 50°C. All samples were heated at a constant heating rate of 20°C/min from 50 to 900°C where it was kept constant for 10 min. To avoid condensation, steam was introduced when temperature inside the TGA reached to 110°C. The amount of catalyst used was based on biomass-to-catalyst ratio of 3 (mass basis), while steam — to-biomass was kept constant at 1 to 1 ratio (mass basis).

Figure 3.2 shows biomass sample weight % (TG %) and its first derivative (DTG) against temperature range of 200-900°C at a heating rate of 20°C/min (Khan et al. 2011b. . Sample drying usually takes place at temperature >200°C which is not

shown here. In TG curves, the residual fractions for palm shell and palm oil frond were 15% and 24%, respectively.

It is known that lignocelluloses biomass mainly consists of hemicellulose, cellulose and lignin. In biomass thermal decomposition, hemicellulose is first to decompose followed by cellulose, and lignin is the last to decompose due to its heavy cross-link molecules (Yang et al. 2004). Based on this fact, the derivative thermogravimetric (DTG) profiles (Fig. 3.2) for thermal decomposition of PS and POF mainly consist of two dominant peaks appearing at ~300°C and ~340-360°C, respectively. The first peaks represent hemicelluloses decomposition while the sec­ond peaks show higher decomposition rate and represent cellulose decomposition.

Based on the profiles, hemicellulose decomposition occurs almost at the same temperature region for both biomass wastes, while cellulose decomposition in PS occurred at higher temperature due to different chemical compositions among the palm oil wastes. In addition, no significant lignin decomposition was observed at 360-900°C that is consistent with findings observed by other researchers (Yang et al. 2004). Figure 3.2 showed the product gas distribution for palm oil frond and palm shell thermal decomposition under inert atmosphere in the absence of steam.

In the present study, H2 released was mainly observed at temperature range of 450-850°C which is well supported by the results from Seo et al. (2010). Maximum H2 content was generated at temperature >650°C for PS which was consistent with the literature. On other hand, for palm oil fronds (POF) H2 content is 19 mol% which was further increased to 34 mol% at 610°C. PS thermal decomposition pro­duced high CH4 content as compared to POF which may be due to different chemi­cal compositions. In addition, PS gave high H2 content (40 mol%) particularly at high temperature (690°C) which was due to the high lignin content.

The addition of steam had increased H2 content in product gas for both palm oil wastes as shown in the Fig. 3.3a, b . (Khan et al. 2011a). Maximum H2 content for PS and POF were increased from 40 to 56 mol% and 34 to 47 mol%, respectively.

The product gas profiles in catalytic steam gasification of palm oil wastes were shown in Figs. 3.4 and 3.5 (Khan et al. 2011a). The highest H2 content of 64 mol% and 50 mol% was produced from catalytic steam gasification of PS and POF, respec­tively (Fig. 3.6a, b). Furthermore, addition of steam had increased H. content by 28% for both palm oil wastes, while catalyst addition in steam gasification further increased H2 content by 12.5% and 6%, respectively, for PS and POF. Based on the data presented, steam contributed significantly to increase the H2 content in palm oil wastes where newly developed bimetallic catalyst addition gave suitable contribu­tion to H2 content in product gas particularly for PS.

3.2 Conclusion

Conversion of biomass to fuel and chemical is feasible for small-scale production. The challenge lies on technology deployed at commercial scale with attractive cost. Biomass utilisation reduces the dependency on fossil-based fuel, thus helping to prolong the fuel supply and at the same time reducing the environmental issues related to CO2 emission since the net CO2 emission is zero if the fuel source is from biomass.

100
900
90 80
70
60
10 0
210 290 370 450 530 610 690 770 850
Temperature (°C)
Fig. 3.4 Gaseous profile for PS in steam gasification
■ H2 ■ C’O pCO:! ■ CHI
370 450 530 610 690 770 850
I 900
210	290
Temperature (°C)
Fig. 3.5 Gaseous profile for POF in steam gasification

Nelfa Desmira, Shigeaki Morita, and Kitagawa Kuniyuki

Abstract Combustion characteristics of straight vegetable oils (SVO) derived from sunflower and soybean were investigated by means of spectroscopic methods. Two­dimensional (2D) distributions of flame temperature were obtained with a thermal video camera. The experimental result indicates that the flame temperatures ranged from 400 to 1,400°C for both SVOs. 2D distributions of NO emission intensity were visualized for these species by spectroscopic imaging. The presence of CO2 and CO from sunflower and soybean oil combustion flames has been observed using FT-IR, and CO2 has been also visualized using infrared camera. It has seen that temperature distribution of sunflower oil is higher than soybean oil and NO emission of sunflower oil is more significant than soybean oil due to the higher temperature of sunflower oil combustion flames as well. CO2 and CO of sunflower oil are higher than soybean oil not only due to the higher temperature of sunflower oil, but we predicted it due to the different component of fatty acid content of both oils. However, since these oils are generated from plant, it could be considered as zero carbon balance.

Keywords Straight vegetable oil • Spectroscopy • Combustion • Emission

6.1 Introduction

Fossil energy is overwhelmingly in charge of energy sources in many combustion processes such as transportation, internal combustion engines, electrical utilities, and other uses. The depletion of fossil energy resources has also become a serious [2] [3]

problem in the near future due to the inability to renew. From such a point of view, alternative fuels to gradually replace fossil energy sources are extremely required. Vegetable oils have been considered amongst the most promising candidates and being known as biofuel due to renewability and carbon zero-balance. The main constituents of vegetable oils include triglycerides, chemical compounds formed from different fatty acids. It is possible to see (Table 6.1) that the fatty acid composi­tions of straight vegetable oil (SVO) candidates tested in this research (Antonio 2012; Kreatif Energi Indonesia 2006) are diverse from each other.

The SVOs, as Table 6.2 (Sidibe et al. 2010) shows, have similar physical proper­ties to those of diesel oil as a fossil fuel, except for the viscosity and flash point. Due to the high viscosity, however, various solutions such as blending with diesel in different proportions, transesterification, and combustion chamber modification have been proposed. Nevertheless, advantages of utilizing SVOs directly by modi­fying the combustion system could save cost by omitting fuel processing (Misra and Murthy 2010).

Numerous researches have been engaged in combustion characteristics of vege­table oils as fuels. Most of the researches have focused on vegetable oil blended with diesel and their conversion into biodiesel oils (Siddarth and Sharma 2010; Chauhan et al. 2010; Mancaruso and Vaglieco 2010; Kamarudin et al. 2008; Basinger et al. 2010; Graboski and McCormick 1998; Shay 1993). However, it is necessary to spectroscopically establish the fundamental information involved in direct SVO combustion which has not been observed up to now. Hence in this research, the direct combustion characteristics of sunflower oil and soybean oil were observed spectroscopically. In addition, NO emitted during the combustion of each SVO was also measured. Furthermore, 2D distribution of spectral intensity NO emission intensities in the SVO combustion flame was in situ monitored.

The high free fatty acid oil feedstock is cheaper in price as compared to edible oil due to its inferior nutritional value, low market demand, and high availability. Oil feedstock that consists of high FFA including Jatropha oil, algae oil, waste cooking oil, animal fats, Castor oil, and Karanja oil has been found to be promising crude oils in biodiesel production. In Malaysia, palm oil is the primary feedstock for biodiesel production. Other than that, Jatropha oil is getting attention by both government and private sectors, lately. It is estimated that Jatropha-based biodiesel will be among the prospective materials to produce cheapest biodiesel with around $400-500 for one tonne of biodiesel (Lim and Lee 2010).

The fatty acid composition of Jatropha oil is similar to other edible oils, but the presence of some anti-nutritional factors such as toxic phorbol esters makes this oil unsuitable for cooking purposes. Jatropha plant has ability to tolerate to a wide range of climate with high drought resistance, it can survive in harsh environment with the presence of leaf-shedding activity. The decomposition of shed leaves will supply nutrients for the plant and reduces water loss during dry season. Moreover, this plant is able to produce high yield even in adverse land situation like degraded or unproductive lands under forest and non-forest use, low to high rainfall areas, and poor nutrition wastelands with various types of soil, including sandy, saline, and stony soils. Its hardness, easy to establish, rapid growth, sustain reasonably high yield without intensive care and producing seeds for 50 years with 40% of seed oil content (better yield and productivity of oil) make Jatropha crops a suitable crops for oil production. From the economical viewpoint, the price of Jatropha-based biodiesel is competitive with petroleum diesel due to the low cultivation cost for Jatropha plantation which does not require much fertilizer and water (Jain and Sharma 2010b; Kumar and Sharma 2008; Makkar and Becker 2009).

The effects of oil-to-alcohol ratio in transesterification were carried out in stirred tank reactor by varying the amount of alcohol concentration. The molar ratio of oil to ethanol was varied from 1:2 until 1:16 by keeping the other reaction conditions constant. The effect of ethanol concentration on biodiesel yield by using immobi­lized lipase is shown in Fig. 12.7a. An increase in the number of moles of ethanol resulted in an increase in biodiesel yield. A higher yield was obtained with a molar ratio of 1:10. As is clear from the figure, there was no significant increase in ethyl ester formation beyond molar ratio 1:10.

Among the alcohols that can be used in the transesterification process are metha­nol, ethanol, propanol, butanol, and amyl alcohol. Methanol and ethanol are used most frequently. These days ethanol is preferred source of alcohol over methanol because the former can be regenerated from different sources. Ethanol is the ideal alcohol due to its renewable origin which would make the biodiesel totally biogen­erated (Morin et al. 2007).

Fig. 12.7 Optimization parameters for transesterification of crude Jatropha curcas oil. (a) Effect of alcohol concentration; (b) effect of water concentration; (c) effect of immobilized enzyme load­ing; (d) effect of temperature; (e) effect of mixing intensity; (f) effect of time course

The trend in biofuels development in Malaysia features on climate change mitiga­tion using first-, second — and next-generation biofuels. The RE projects in the pipe­line are:

1. Palm biomass-based cogeneration

2. Biogas recovery, capture and utilisation from palm oil mill effluent (POME)

3. Methane avoidance—composting, zero discharge, zero emissions

1.2.1 First-Generation Biofuels

1.2.1.1 Status of Palm Biodiesel Development

The first-generation biofuels using palm oil were initiated with three main drivers:

1. Energy security—less dependency on fossil fuels

2. Environment—mitigate global warming with cleaner emissions

3. Agricultural support—props up commodity prices

With countries such as those in the EU and the USA promoting the use of biofuels, interest in biodiesel production from palm oil grew in 2006. The most economical feedstock used for biodiesel production is palm oil which has the high­est yield per hectare compared to other seed crops, as shown in Fig. 1.1.

MPOB-developed biodiesel technology can accommodate different feedstock ranging from palm oil to high free fatty acids (FFA) oil such as used frying oil, residual oil from spent bleaching earth (SBE) and palm fatty acid distillates (PFAD) (Loh et al. 2006a, b; Lau et al. 2009).

Soyabean

Sunflower

Cottonseed

Palm

Rapeseed

Groundnut

The R&D on palm biodiesel was extensively researched in the 1980s, where the first palm biodiesel pilot plant (MPOB/PETRONAS) was constructed and commis­sioned in 1985, and extensive stationary engine tests and field trials conducted (Choo and Goh 1987; Choo and Ong 1989; Choo et al. 1990,1995; Ong et al. 1992).

The first trial was conducted from 1986 to 1994 involving 30 buses mounted with Mercedes Benz OM352 Engine (each of the 10 buses was tested using 100% palm biodiesel and 50%:50% blend, respectively, and the other 10 used 100% petroleum diesel as a control). Each bus covered 300,000 km—lifetime of engine. This trial showed that no engine modification was required using palm biodiesel, and the resulting engine performance, fuel consumption, exhaust emission, repair and maintenance were promising too.

The second trial was conducted in Germany on commercial trains in September 2004. Subsequently, there were also other trials done using palm oil/petroleum die­sel blends.

To date, the MPOB-developed palm biodiesel technology on normal and winter grade biodiesel (Choo et al. 2002) was successfully commercialised in Malaysia and overseas (e. g. South Korea, Thailand).

As at the end of October 2011, the government had approved 60 biodiesel manu­facturing licences with a total annual capacity of 6.79 million tonnes. However, from January to October 2011, there were 11 biodiesel plants in operation with total annual production capacity of 1.65 million tonnes per year. The potential use of palm biodiesel was hindered by some newly set RE regulation and standards, e. g. in the EU and the USA, with more stringent GHG emission reduction requirement for biofuels in use. So the government has moved to promote local consumption of palm biodiesel, i. e. mandatory use of B5 in the country.

The first phase of B5 implementation was started in February 2009 in two gov­ernment departments (Armed Forces and Kuala Lumpur City Hall) through Klang Valley Distribution Terminal (KVDT) involving 3,900 vehicles. The second phase
of B5 implementation was conducted in Central Region focusing on the retail stations (1,150) located in Putrajaya, Melaka, Negeri Sembilan, Kuala Lumpur and Selangor starting 1 June 2011 and completed 1 November 2011. It was fully imple­mented for subsidised sectors (retail stations, fleetcard, skid tanks and fisheries) in the Central Region beginning on 15 February 2012. The estimated total annual B5 consumption is 2.60 billion L per year (2.21 million tonnes per year), and the mar­ket price of B5 at retail stations is same as diesel at retail stations outside Central Region.

The phase 3 national B5 implementation will begin in 2014. When implemented in whole country, a potential local consumption of palm biodiesel will be 500,000 tonnes per annum, and this will contribute to a greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction of 1.5 million tonnes CO2 equivalent per year.

5.2.1 OPW from the Palm oil Plantation

5.2.1.1 Palm oil Fronds

Transplanting of palm oil seedlings, maintenance and harvesting of FFB as well as replanting of seedlings are the main processes which generate OPW within the plantation. Pruning and other field establishment and management processes (mostly after harvesting) generate large amount of palm oil fronds (OPFs) which comprise the petiole (about 6-8 m long) and the palm oil leaves (OPLs). Normally, after harvesting, the OPFs are left to rot in the plantation in order to fertilise the soil (Yusoff 2006). However, the huge amount of OPF generated globally may be con­sidered underutilised as all of them may not be necessarily useful for nutrient recy­cling or soil conservation in the plantation. OPFs form the largest group of OPW (in the form of solid residue) whose total global generation capacity currently amounts to nearly 92.4 million tonnes (by dry weight) annually (FAO 2011). In Malaysia, for instance, in 2010 and 2011, about 54.17 million tonnes and 54.24 million tonnes of OPF alone were generated from the palm oil industry, respectively, compared to about 36 million tonnes in 2004 (Wan Zahari et al. 2004). Meanwhile, an estimate of about 56 million tonnes/year of OPF would be generated in Malaysia alone dur­ing the replanting process by the year 2020 (MPOB 2012).

The petiole of the OPF contains the fibre (mainly lignocellulosic materials) cov­ered with a hard epicarp. OPF is found to contain high amount of carbohydrates which are convertible to simple sugars, biofuels, etc. OPF is reported to contain higher holocellulose (about 84% dry matter content comprising cellulose and hemi — celluloses) compared to the fibres of pineapple leaves, coconut leaves and banana stem (Abdul Khalil et al. 2006). The acid detergent fibre (ADF) and neutral detergent fibre (NDF) of the OPF are found to be about 45.5% dry matter (DM) and 67.6% DM, respectively (Khamseekhiew et al. 2001). OPF contains about 13-37% lignin (Aim-oeb et al. 2008; Khamseekhiew et al. 2001), 5-12% crude protein, 2% fat (high in unsaturated fatty acids) (Hassim et al. 2010), 14-15% extractives and 2-30% sugar. Glucose is found to be the major sugar component in OPF juice in the range of 53.95 g/l. Other sugars in OPF include sucrose (20.46 g/l) and fructose (1.68 g/l) (Zahari et al. 2012). The nutrient and metal components of OPF fibre and OPF juice (or sap) have been reported by Zahari et al. (2012). OPF fibre and OPF juice contain sulphur (0.2% and 0.4%, respectively), phosphorus (0.02% for each), potassium (0.2% and 2.3%, respectively), calcium (1.4% and 2.9%, respectively), magnesium (0.2% and 0.5%, respectively), boron (4 ppm and 2 ppm, respectively), manganese (61 ppm and 2 ppm, respectively), copper (2 ppm for each), iron (100 ppm and 66 ppm, respectively) and zinc (3 ppm and 9 ppm, respectively). They also reported 174.11 pg/g total amino acids in the OPF juice comprising mainly of 111.0 pg/g serine, 22.7 pg/g glutamic acid and 27.1 pg/g proline.

The study of biodiesel production using CPO as lipid source was then furthered using packed bed reactors. The production of biodiesel was run in two modes of operation, i. e., continuous and recirculation mode. The result was compared and presented in Fig. 8.5 . The FAME yield obtained along the recirculation mode of 5.5 h reaction time was scattered between 80 and 91%. The retention time for con­tinuous packed bed reactor system of 0.15 h was sufficient for the transesterification reaction to reach equilibrium point. The retention time is the fraction of mass of lipase used (5 g) over mass flow rate (33.93 g/h) (Sim 2011).

Since Lipozyme TL IM is capable of catalyzing CPO transesterification with high efficiency in continuous system as in the batch process, the biodiesel produc­tion in continuous PBR system was carried out to study the system weaknesses and lipase instability against denaturation factors. The system was continuously run for 4 days, and the reaction was stopped at 99 h operating time due to a sudden surge in pressure drop in PBR (Fig. 8.6). Pressure drop of 0.25 bar has been detected in PBR, and the value increased to 1.25 bar at 99 h. Although Fjerbaek et al. (2009) emphasize that the pressure drop problem due to heavy viscosity of fluid in

solvent-free system can partly be alleviated by adding solvent into system, the prob­lem still persisted in the current study with tert-butanol solvent. The FAME yield achieved within 1-99 h operation period ranged from 77.28 to 91.15%, and the values were obtained in steady-state condition after a long time operation (few hours). During the long-term operation of 99 h, the system maintained average FAME yield of 85% without the appreciable loss in FAME yield. The loss of lipase activity was attributed to the adsorption of glycerol onto the enzyme support result­ing in diffusion limitations (Halim et al. 2009). The advantage of using tert-butanol to appreciably increase life span of lipase in the current study has also been observed in the methanolysis of cottonseed oil mediated with tert-butanol where the system was able to maintain 95% FAME yield for 500 h reaction time (Royon et al. 2007). The major obstacle for the long-term operation of CPO transesterification in a con­tinuous system was the significant pressure drop observed after 99 h reaction time. The commercial Lipozyme TL IM was claimed to have a particle size of 300­1,000 pm. Furthermore, the continuous system with minimum pressure drop and high FAME yield for long-term operation was a compromise between the biocata­lyst size and packed bed height (Fig 8.7).

Then, optimization study was also carried out using WCPO using PBR. The optimized conditions found were 10.53 cm packed bed height, 0.57 ml/min sub­strate flow rate, and 80.30% FAME yield. The value of FAME yield obtained from experiment was compared with the one predicted as shown is Table 8.8. There was an error of ±0.81% for FAME yield value under 95% confidence level (i. e., 79.1 ± 0.81%) (Halim 2008).

Studies by Rahaman (2011) found that the amount of lipase used in the reaction will depend on the packed bed height. More lipase will be available to catalyze the reaction if higher packed bed height is used, resulting in higher FAME yield. It was also observed that, after a certain height of bed, increasing the packed bed height does not have much effect on increasing the FAME yield. This may be due to a saturation effect of the amount of enzyme. This can also be explained by considering that the active sites of the enzyme molecules present in excess would not be exposed to the substrate and remain inside the bulk of enzyme particles without contributing significantly to the reaction (Gandhi et al. 1995) . In this study, 8 cm of packed bed was identified as the optimum height for the lipase giving 86% of FAME.

8.6 Conclusion

As a conclusion, production of biodiesel using bio-route, especially enzymatic reac­tion, showed a big potential in expanding to bigger scale productions to support the diminishing of energy resources. All the results presented and discussed showed that enzyme is a very promising tool to produce high-quality product with less energy consumption. This has met the requirement of sustainable technology in conjunction with the current global energy crisis with multiple choices of lipid source that could be used to produce biodiesel in future. The only challenge in using enzyme technology is that the life span for lipase was short, and this will give moti­vation for researcher to find ways to curb the problem. By using immobilized lipase was one of the solutions for the issue raised and can be improved further. Packed bed immobilized enzyme reactors could be the reactor configuration that can be used to deliver mass production of biodiesel.

Acknowledgments The authors would like to express their gratitude to the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MOSTI), Malaysia, for their financial support of the postgraduate study, National Science Fellowship (NSF) and project funding through E-Science Fund (project no. 02-01-05-SF0122 and 6013202). The research university grant (project no. 1001/ PJKIMIA/814004) and research university postgraduate research grant scheme (project no. 1001/ PJKIMIA/8031036) awarded by Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) are also appreciated.

There are three major long-term implications and benefits of the ET Process®. First, features of the technology solve old problems that plague the enzymatic biodiesel process. The result is profit generation and sustainable business practice. Second, as one component of the energy pipeline, it contributes to overall efficiency and reduced environmental risk. Third, it lends itself to aiding social concerns related to biodiesel production in rural communities.

Business. With the new development discussed in this chapter, biodiesel is readily produced at a lower cost and with greater profit. In the face of today’s unstable market, this industry can achieve long-term sustainability only by having stronger, independent sources of income. This is possible when biodiesel is produced at a cost that is competitive with diesel and when other high value products can be derived from the same feedstock material. This is especially true when virgin oil is used. Other fea­tures, such as the absence of environmental waste and flexibility of feedstock accep­tance, also reduce risk in capital investment. Because the ET Process® has a high FFA tolerance, it is also possible to store crude oil for year-round production of fuel.

Environment. Several recent studies and articles discuss the negative effects of bio­fuel production (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations 2008; Patzek and Patzek 2007) . Pollution brought about by wastewater and chemical waste discharge in bodies of water causes damage to the ecosystem (e. g., death of aquatic life in river systems). Land use change when forests are cleared for planta­tions may increase rather than decrease greenhouse gas emissions. These are issues that have to be resolved by communication between proponents of various feed­stock sources, government, policymakers, environmental agencies and technology providers. One part of the problem that technology can address is the efficiency in utilization of feedstock resources, which may consume considerable amounts of water and fertilizer. Without the right technology, the optimal value of these natural resources cannot be obtained. Furthermore, a flexible technology can enable the efficient conversion of less land-intensive feedstock, such as algae.

It also has universal use, meaning that feedstock plants need not be transplanted to areas that are unsuitable for their growth. For instance, palm trees grow abundantly in tropical areas where the temperatures are high and rain is abundant. These could be used to make many useful products, such as summer biodiesel, winter biodiesel, glycerol, phytochemicals and others. The same technology can be applied to other regions having its own specialty crops. Since it can also be used for different feed­stock sources, the land may adapt round cropping to preserve biodiversity (e. g., every other year, every 2-3 years). The technology supports the idea of efficiently using resources, so that waste is minimal and as much of the surrounding areas are protected from needless expansion that may stem from want of increased profit.

Social. The ET Process® can be designed in small or large scale and is made to be fully automated. The process does not produce wastewater, chemical waste and toxic compounds. Popularization of this kind of technology may significantly help rural area development, especially those with poor infrastructure or means of obtaining fuel. The direct advantage of the use of biofuel is lower health risks as compared to coal or wood burning in homes. The efficiency and additional profit brought about by the process can offset the capital cost and distribution cost of the product. Users can have an independent source of energy, bio-based products and livelihood. The technology is flexible enough to adapt to and enrich the everyday lives of rural communities, leaving them free to use their added resources for infra­structure and economic development. Unlike before, technical and business aspects of the technology make it accessible to local residents and not just corporations. Profit and products brought about by an efficient technology would encourage city dwellers to migrate to the countryside in the long run. Increased opportunities in rural areas can drive employment and restore the balance of resources relative to urban areas.

11.2 Summary

In summary, it is now already quite possible for biodiesel to be produced in an envi­ronmentally friendly manner. To establish sound business and achieve long-term sustainability, it is better to produce biodiesel together with other products. This can only be accomplished using the right enzymatic process.

From Fig. 13.7, experiment 1 (0.4 M, 100%) gave higher reducing sugar content of 4.08 mg/g compared to experiment 3 (0.4 M, 30%) with 2.04 mg/g. Experiment 2 (0.1 M, 100%) also gave higher reducing sugar content at 1.88 mg/g than experi­ment 4 (0.1 M, 30%) with 1.60 mg/g. Therefore, it can be deduced that higher tem­perature of hydrolysis converts more cellulose to simple sugars.

For the varying hydrolysis molarity, experiment 1 (0.4 M, 100%) gave higher glucose content at 4.08 mg/g than experiment 2 (0.1 M, 100%) of 1.88 mg/g. Experiment 3 (0.4 M, 30%) gave higher reducing sugar content at 2.08 mg/g than experiment 4 (0.1 M, 30%) of 1.60 mg/g. Therefore, this tells us that higher molar­ity of acid hydrolysis converts more cellulose to simple sugars.

POIC Lahad Datu is located in the district of Lahad Datu on South Eastern Coast of Sabah and well situated at the center of Sabah’s oil palm growing belt (Fig. 2.1). Since its establishment, a total of 1,697 acres of land have been developed for industrial investments; these include 600 acres in phase I, 500 acres in phase II, and 547 acres in phase IIIa designated for oil and gas, logistics, energy, and the biomass sector (Fig. 2.2a, b). The developed areas are completed with basic and specialized

infrastructure, which include power and water supply, roads, liquid jetty, dry bulk terminal, and pipe rack facilities among others. About 2,750 acres of land in phase III are reserved for future development.

The POIC Lahad Datu’s industrial infrastructure constitutes the first comprehen­sive set of facilities available for industrial set ups. Prior to POIC, there is no orga­nized industrial park for factories in the entire East Coast of Sabah. Thus, anyone wishing to start a manufacturing facility then will need to begin by identifying suit­able land and sort out all related issues such as land zoning, access to ports, roads, water electricity, telecommunications, and environment issues. All these require­ments are readily available at POIC Lahad Datu.