Hydrothermally-treated Empty Fruit Bunch Cofiring in Coal Power Plants: A Techno-Economic Assessment

Co-firing biomass with coal is believed to be able to improve the domestic energy security in Indonesia. Hydrothermal treatment process prior to the combustion is needed to convert raw biomass into coal-like product. The main objective of this research is to demonstrate the technological, economic and environmental feasibility of the cofiring coal with hydrothermally-treated empty fruit bunch (HT-EFB) through extensive laboratory investigations, simulations, system analyses and economic assessments from literature. Based on computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation, HT-EFB mass fraction of 10 to 25% seems to be the most preferable cofiring condition in term of temperature and produced gas compositions including CO2, CO, NO and SOx. An aspen plus simulation showed combining hydrothermal treatment with cofiring in an integrated system power plant could be a positive way to generate electricity with overall energy efficiency 37.09%. Moreover, fuel production cost, EFB supply capacity from palm mills surrounding the power plants, and transportation cost are required parameters to be considered for developing large scale biomass cofiring and integrated supply chain.