The whole country area belongs to the tropical climate. The tropical rain forest occupies 80% of the national land (4,690 km2). Seventy per cent of the forest is virgin, and half of which is environmentally preserved. The land is roughly divided into eastern and western regions, and the eastern region, Templon River basin, is undeveloped forest except seaside, and forms a vast national park. Most of the population lives in the three district in the western region.

Agricultural productivity of Eastern Asia countries including Brunei is low compared to the monsoon region. Tropic soil easy loses nutrition salts, and is not suitable for agriculture. Leaves and cut trees are soon decomposed by microbes and termites, leaving no humus behind. Additionally, as the effect of heat and water, soil components other than aluminum oxide and iron oxide are easily washed away, and the soil is barren. In the rain forest, the nutrition to support the forest is collected not by the soil, but by the trees and plants at the canopy.

Small scale agriculture includes dry rice cropping in the forest in the mountain region and rice cropping at the terraced paddy field. For short term, taros are produced by slush and burn agriculture to use the nutrition collected by the forest biomass, but this destroys the forest, which is the main nutrition collector, and the soil nutrition is used up in 2 years, and after that the land becomes barren.

At the low wet land where the washed nutrition is stored, Sago palm plantation is possible. Swamp forest arises at this kind of land. This swamp forest is composed of trees with low height, and the plants grows only by single layer. This leads to good supply of light, but since the oxygen in soil lacks, humus decomposition is prevented, and peat is formed. Thus, even if agricultural field is made, the surface begins to sink soon to form pad. Agriculture is difficult in this region.

At the seaside exists mangrove forest at the brackish water region where seawater is comes and goes with low and high tide. The soil of this forest is strongly acidic due to the root acid that mangrove root secrets. This land cannot be used for slush and burn agriculture, and was barren in terms of agriculture. It was not until 20th century that it got used for fish breeding.

Jatropha integrated business consists of upstream and downstream activities. Upstream activity includes jatropha nursery and jatropha plantation. Down stream activity includes seeds expelling process where crude jatropha oil resulted can be used for biodiesel manufacturing, whereas jatropha by product/waste (i. e. seed cake, seed shell, glycerin) can be used to manufacture bio-fertilizer and other applications. Both activities are known as an environmental friendly products.

The earth has a huge stock biomass covering wide regions including forests and the ocean. The total biomass of the world is 1,800 billion tons on the ground and 4 billion tons in the ocean, and a comparative amount of biomass exists in the soil. The total biomass on the ground is 33,000 EJ on the energy basis, which corresponds to 80 times or more of the annual energy consumption of the world.

However, some part of the biomass is used as food by living things including humans, and also for uses other than foods, which are necessary for the human living. Therefore, it is important to estimate quantity of biomass resources, which can be used for energy source.

Although modes and volume of production of agricultural residues may differ by production areas, rates of production of residues relative to crop yield are reported as 140% for rice, 130% for wheat, 100% for corn, and 40% for rhizomic crops (Hall et al., 1993). In this literature, the rate of production of sugarcane residue derived from stems, leaves and tops produced in the fields during harvesting is reported as 28% relative to the crop yield.

Annual production of agricultural residues estimated by determining production of each crop based on the FAO statistics (2000), and using the above-described rates of production of residues is shown in Fig. 2.11.1. About 3 billion tons of agricultural residues in total are produced around the world, in which rice residue accounts for a largest production of 836 million tons. Residue of rhizomic crops amounts 272 million tons, and wheat and corn residues, which not produced very much in Japan, amounts 754 and 591 million tons, respectively.

Kenaf grows faster than wood and is considered an environmentally friendly material. Panasonic Malaysia developed an environmentally friendly system for manufacturing kenaf (Hibiscus cannabinus) particleboard. The process decreased pollution, thus conserving Malaysia’s rich coral reef ecosystem. The technique for manufacturing kenaf board was originally developed in cooperation with Kyoto University using kenaf grown in China. In 2005, Panasonic succeeded in developing a process for growing kenaf in Malaysia that was suitable for manufacturing high quality kenaf particleboard. This process produces 30% waste, but the fiber is burned to provide electric power for the manufacturing plant and the ash is returned to fields to fertilize kenaf (see http://panasonic. co. jp/ism/kenaf/index. html).

Further Information

American Society for Testing Materials (ASTM) Standard. D 1554 Standard Terminology Relating to Wood-Base Fiber and Particle Panel Materials. (2001)

Japanese Industrial Standard (JIS) A 5908. Particleboards. (2003)

“Field survey on use of woody biomass,” Statistic Department, Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fishery. (2006)

Statistics of Ceramics and Construction Materials, Ministry of Trade and Industry, ISBN:9784903259192. (2006)

Thomas M. Maloney, Modern Particleboard. ISBN 0-87930-063-9. Published by Miller Freeman Publications Inc. (1977)

Walter T, Kartal S. N, Hang W. J, Umemura S, Kawai S. Strength, decay and termite resistance of oriented kenaf fiberboard. J Wood Science, 53(6) 481-486 (2007)

S. Kawai, K. Ohnishi, Y. Okudaira and M. Zhang. Manufacture of oriented fiberboard from kenaf bast fibers and its application to the composite panels. The 2000 International Kanaf Symposium, p.144-148, Oct. 13-14, Hiroshima (2000)

K. Ohnishi, Y. Okudaira, M. Zhang, and S. Kawai. Manufacturing and properties of oriented medium density fiberboard from non-wood lignocellulosic fibers I. Mokuzai Gakkaishi, 46 (2) 114-123 (2000) (Japanese)

S. Suzuki. The state of the arts on current timber structures. V: The state of the arts on reuse and recycle of wooden structures. Journals of the Society of Materials Science, Japan, 53 (4) 465-470 (2004) (Japanese)

Lignocellulosic biomass is generally composed of cellulose. hemicellulose and lignin (Table 5.2.1). Before ethanol fermentation. biomass has to be pre-treated with acid or alkali. and/or with cellulases to be hydrolyzed into sugar solution.

(a) Concentrated Sulfuric Acid Process

The process of Arkenol Co. Ltd. (USA) was modified and improved in NEDO project between 2001 and 2005. Concentrated sulfuric acid is sprayed on to wood chips (moisture of about 15%) which is then kneaded well at room temperature. During the kneading the structure of cellulose is decrystallized. Concentration of sulfuric acid is then adjusted at 20 to 30% by adding water, and the wood material is kept at around 90oC for 10 to 15 min for hydrolysis. After solid fraction is removed through filtration, sugar components are separated from the acid on ion-exchange chromatography. Sugar solution containing hexoses and pentoses are fermented by yeast or Zymomonas strains genetically modified. Sulfuric acid is concentrated again to reuse.

6.4.1 Cost of bioenergy

Cost of Bioenergy can be disaggregated into 3 stages: resource cost, conversion technology cost, and secondary energy cost at consumer end.

Resource cost consists of not only cost of resource but also 1) opportunity cost (the value if biomass was used as material or food), 2) waste management cost for appropriate disposal, and 3) environment cost (environmental impact of biomass production).

Conversion technology cost is dependent on type of biomass input, type of technology, time frame of evaluation, and other factors.

Secondary energy (electricity, heat, fuel, and other forms that are converted from biomass resources) cost is calculated as summation of resource cost and conversion technology cost.

It is necessary to evaluate the cost of bioenergy with the latest information relating to energy cost, land use competition, available bioenergy technologies, externality of environment, and other aspects.

Total forest areas in Malaysia are about 5.9 million hectares. Only 1.29% of the total area is allowed for logging industry. The balance is mainly for permanent forest estate, forest plantation, state land, and wildlife reserve and annual coupe for permanent forest estate. Wood industries are mainly referred to the logging industry, saw milling industry, the panel product industry (plywood, veneer, particle board, and medium density fibre board), the moulding

industry and the furniture industry. The forest industries are rapidly moving away from manufacturing low value products to value added products. These industries generated different type of biomass residues namely sawdust, off cut and wood barks. A waste minimization program is implemented in the wood based industries due to shortage of tropical wood supply. A value added such as particle board and finger joints are manufactured from the wood waste for the furniture industry.

The wood industries maximized the biomass residues into the value added products. The residue such as off-cut from the saw mills is used as fuel for the kiln drying or sold as boiler fuels. The middle portions of the log from the plywood and veneer mills are used as boiler fuels. The remaining wastes are mainly the bark and the saw dust. In the isolated areas they are burned in the incinerator or boiler to produce heat.

The generation of biomass residues from the wood based industry is declined due to limited supply of logs and maximization of residues into value added product. The biomass from the processing plants is used as fuel for their combined heat and power plant or sell to the potential users such as brick manufactures. The chart below shows the estimated potential energy and electricity from the waste generated from the saw mills, plywood and moulding plants.

2.6.1 Types of woody biomass material and its characteristics

Forest industry provides woody biomass material as by-products such as logging residues and as main-products which is cut directly from trees and forests. The planted forests are usually thinned out to maintain the growth space among stumps. These thinning trees are expected to utilize for biomass energy materials, because they have no commercial values and leave in a stand after thinning operation. A cutting cycle in the temperate zone is around 50 to 100 years and wood residues of 0.36 m3 blanches and 0.22 m3 stumps are left after producing 1 m3 logs. These residues are utilized for modern and traditional biomass energy source in many countries.

Woodfuel accounts for about 53 percent of total round wood produced in the world. However woodfuel accounts for only several percent in industry countries at present, tough industry countries used to depend on woodfuel until 1960s. In Japan case, hardwood forests located near rural communities used to be main resources for fuelwood and charcoal. Nowadays hardwood forests have not been utilized as woody resources, because hardwood timber value is cheaper compared with softwood. Though hardwood forests have not industrial values so far, they have high potential to provide renewable energy sources to mitigate global warming. Aside from this, fast growing species, such as willow (Salix), poplars (Populus), and birch (Retula), have been planted to produce biomass energy materials.

Biogasification, a technology for recovering methane gas from organic matter in an anaerobic reactor, is also referred to as “anaerobic digestion.” This process was developed in the 1980s to treat organic wastewater. In 1997, 90 facilities operated worldwide (total throughput is 3.5 million tons/year). Japan has 12 facilities to treat human waste and food waste, and 3 of these treat only food waste. Fig. 2.15.1 illustrates the main processes of biogasification. Low solid concentrations (6 to 10%) are treated using a “wet system,” while high solid concentrations (25 to 40%) are treated using a “dry system.” Treatment systems are also classified by their dominant microorganisms: methophilic (used at 30 to 40°C) or thermophilic (used at 50 to

60°C).