Babassu—A new approach for an ancient Brazilian biomass

Babassu is a palm tree natural in the N and NE regions of Brazil whose fruit's kernel is used to produce palm oil, but it can also be a source of biomass for energy, which will be the focus of this article. For this purpose, the energy properties of this resource, including: higher and lower heating values; proximate, ultimate and thermogravimetric analysis of the fruit's components; together with other parameters such as density and equilibrium moisture were analysed. An availability study was also conducted considering the actual commercialised amount of kernel (only part of the fruit with commercial value), the use of an improved recovering system and the country potential. The results indicated that at least two of the fruit components do have energy-use potential, with very distinctive behaviour—epicarp (11% of the fruit, LHV of 20238 kJ kg−1) and endocarp (59%, LHV of 21179 kJ kg−1). The availability varies from 1.6 million tonnes of fruits/year on the actual baseline scenario up to 4.1 if an improved collecting system is used. The country potential was estimated at 6.8 million tonnes of fruits/year (main potential on Maranhão state—92%). More over, it is important to notice that the development of such potential must be made in line with preservation of the social structure of the local communities—the base for the collecting and segregating raw material supplying system—in order to secure the social, environmental and energy benefits of the sustainable exploitation of such biomass resource.