Potential of Palm Oil Empty Fruit Bunch as Biogas Substrate

Abstract

Natural gas is a source of energy that comes from the earth which is depleting every day, an alternative source of energy is needed and one of the sources comes from biogas. There is an abundance of empty fruit bunch (EFB) that comes from palm oil plantation that can become a substrate for biogas production. A methodology of fermentation based on Verein Deutscher Ingenieure was used to utilize EFB as a substrate to produce biogas using biogas sludge and wastewater sludge as inoculum in wet fermentation process under mesophilic condition. Another optimization was done by adding a different water ratio to the inoculum mixture. In 20 days, an average of 6gr from 150gr of total EFB used in each sample was consumed by the microbes. The best result from 20 days of experiment with both biogas sludge and wastewater sludge as inoculum were the one added with 150gr of water that produced 2910ml and 2185ml of gas respectively. The highest CH 4 produced achieved from biogas sludge and wastewater sludge with an addition of 150gr of water to the inoculum were 27% and 22% CH 4 respectively. This shows that biogas sludge is better in term of volume of gas that is produced and CH percentage.