Feature Article

Challenges Facing the Palm Oil Industry

Ma Ah Ngan*

I
INTRODUCTION oil (CPO) produced to the FFB processed
by the palm oil mill. It is taken for granted
t has been said many times that there that the higher the OER the more efficient
will hardly be any drastic change in is the mill. In many instances, the OER has
palm oil milling technology if mills been misused to penalize palm oil mills as
being operated inefficiently, thus, resulting
continue to receive and process the FFB in
in low OER. It must be remembered that the
its present form. The experience of past 50
oil is made in the field, not in the mill. If for
years or so can testify this. However, it is
whatever reasons the FFB contains less oil
justified to put on record here that there
than expected, there is nothing the mill can
were many incremental improvement and
do except getting lower OER. Of course if
changes in various unit operations, but
a mill is not run efficiently, more oil will be
these were hardly revolutionary in nature.
lost. This will also result in low OER. This
The palm oil mills still rely on the massive
can be easily checked by conducting oil loss
heavy and huge steel vessels like sterilizers,
analysis on the waste streams of the mill. It
cages and threshers to handle the fresh fruit
is also true that, a mill suffers from high oil
bunch (FFB). Large quantities of steam and
loss will also produce high OER. This is be-
water are required to sterilize the FFB, either
cause the FFB has high oil content.
in full set or crushed form, and to dilute the
crude oil slurry for oil recovery in the clari-
The dilemma faced by the palm oil mill
fication process. The recent trend to reduce
is that the palm oil mill does not know how
the water usage in the process has not been
much oil is received. The oil is contained
very encouraging. Most of the water used in
in the FFB or fruits. The palm oil mill only
the milling process, except the steam blow-
knows the weight of the FFB received with
off and exhaust-steam, ended up as palm oil
the oil in it. Many attempts have been made
mill effluent (POME) which has to be treat-
to measure the oil contained in the FFB, but
ed to comply with the Department of Envi-
so far it has not been successful. There is no
ronment (DOE) discharge standards.
direct method to gauge the efficiency of the
mill. Unlike the refinery where every kilo-
Till today, the palm oil mill’s key per-
gram of the oil can be accounted for, what
formance indicator is still the oil extraction
a palm oil mill can do is to strive to reduce
rate (OER). It is a ratio of the crude palm
the oil losses as much as possible. As a good
process control indicator, an oil loss of 1.5%
* Malaysian Palm Oil Board,
to 2.0% to FFB is considered as good.
P. O . B o x 1 0 6 2 0 , 5 0 7 2 0 K u a l a L u m p u r,
Malaysia.

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 Feature Article

There are many factors contributing to of financial loss in harvesting and process-
oil content in FFB. It is beyond the scope ing the under-ripe and unripe fruitlets in
of this article to deliberate on it. However, the FFB. It amounts to billions of ringgit.
there is no question that ripe FFB or ripe At the current scenario, a 0.5% loss in OER
fruits contain maximum oil and ripe fruits (assuming the palm oil mills process 90 mil-
will detach from the bunch by themselves. lion tonnes FFB per annum) means a loss of
No outside force is needed to detach fruits 0.45 million tonnes of CPO. This amounts to
from the bunch. Unfortunately not all the RM 1125 billions assuming a price of RM
fruits ripen at the same time. The ripe fruits 2500 t-1 of CPO.
at the lower part of the bunch (nearer to the
ground), when detached from the bunch As mentioned earlier, only ripe fruits
will drop to the ground. The fruits at the yield maximum oil. Ripe fruits will detach
upper part of the bunch are retained by the and fall to the ground. Thus, if the estates
bunch (or more precisely, the spikelets) until can only harvest the ripe fruits for process-
the bunch is cut, then the bunch will drop ing, then the full potential of oil yield from
and fruits will scatter on the ground. estates and the whole industry can be real-
ized.
As regards when to cut the FFB depends
on the ripeness standard of individual com- It is proposed here that the estates should
pany. Obviously, the oil content in the FFB not cut the FFB until all fruits on the lower
follows the ripeness standards. The ripe FFB part of the FFB have detached and dropped
contains more oil. Thus, a palm oil mill re- to the ground. The remaining fruits retained
ceives high percentage of ripe FFB will yield by the now half-empty FFB can be collected
more oil and subsequently higher OER pro- when it is cut as usual. But it must be men-
vided the oil loss is under control, i.e. under tioned here that lose fruits should be collect-
2% to FFB. This is the department that har- ed daily and sent to the mill for immediate
bours the endless arguments between the processing.
estates and the mill when the OER is low.
The estates claim to have harvested the ripe Obviously this is easier said than done,
FFB for the mill and it is the mill that is not because breaking out of old mindset is very
operated efficiently, thus, getting low OER. difficult (painful). It is the bottle-neck of the
Similarly, the mill claims otherwise. No- palm oil industry. Collecting loose fruits is
body can have the right answer. The prob- a very tedious job and nobody wants to do
lem is that no one knows how much oil is in it. The problem is compounded by an acute
the FFB. Worst still the degree of ripeness is shortage of labour. As a result, estates, in or-
different for each FFB. Every consignment der to reduce the number of loose fruits un-
of FFB to the mill invariably contains differ- collected, tend to harvest more under-ripe
ent categories of FFB including over-ripe, FFB so that no fruits will detach from the
ripe, under-ripe, unripe, rotten and long bunch. This will result in more oil lost. This
stalk, etc. Generally, ripe and under-ripe trend will continue if the labour problem is
categories form the majority (>80%) of the not solved.
FFB consignments.
It is clear that under-ripe fruit will not Notwithstanding that the industry
yield maximum oil, thus, oil is lost if under- should look seriously into this problem. The
ripe FFB with under-ripe and unripe fruits present R&D effort on loose fruits collection
is harvested. The full potential of oil yield should be intensified. The loose fruit col-
from the estates can never be realized with lection device should be made more user-
the current practice of harvesting by the es- friendly to entice more people to do the job.
tates. No one has ever estimated the amount This should be done with utmost urgency

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 Feature Article

because the sustainability and profitability evolution of a green and sustainable palm
of the palm oil industry to a large extend de- oil milling technology as discussed below.
pend on the success of this endeavour.
Over the last decade the palm oil mill has
There are many tangible advantages if been beset by an array of environmental ad-
the palm oil mills only receive and process versities like air, water, noise and odour pol-
loose fruits: lutions. Lately the LCA study (Vijaya et al.,
2008) has demonstrated that palm oil mill is
• the transport vehicles can be more pro- one of the chief contributors to global warm-
ductive by transporting fruits only with- ing. This is due to the emission of biogas
out the non-oil bearing bunch stalks; during the anaerobic digestion of POME.
Biogas consists of about 65% methane and
• the throughput and productivity of the 35% carbon dioxide, both are greenhouse
mill will be enhanced. This is because gases; methane is 21 times more potent than
the mill needs only to process the ripe carbon dioxide in terms of global warming.
fruits with maximum oil and not togeth-
er with the unproductive bunch stalk. Large amount of water is required in the
The bunch not only carries no oil, it will palm oil milling process. Most of the water
also absorb oil during sterilization and used, except the steam exhaust from the
threshing of the cooked FFB thus result- sterilizer during FFB sterilization, ended
ed in more oil loss; up as POME which requires rigorous treat-
ment to comply with the DOE’s stringent
• the raw empty bunch stalks are left discharge standards. This is the main cause
in the field. The mill will no longer be of water pollution.
burdened to dispose of the empty fruit
bunch (EFB); Environmental impact is the key factor
determining the sustainability of palm oil
• for the same oil output, a mill requires a production in future. A holistic and effective
smaller loading ramp to store the fruits approach is required to address the environ-
and smaller number of sterilizer cages to mental issues caused by the palm oil indus-
transfer the fruits for sterilization; try. In this context, a new and green palm
oil milling process has to be developed. The
• no thresher is required; new process should aim primarily to reduce
energy consumption (i.e. more energy effi-
• the subjective FFB grading is no longer cient), reduce black smoke emission and to
required; and reduce drastically water consumption thus
eliminating the production of POME and
• most important of all, the full potential biogas.
oil yield from estates can be realized as
only the ripe fruits contain maximum Vigorous response to a crisis often re-
oil. quires a profound shift in thinking. A dra-
matic change in the current milling process
These are just a few obvious advantages is urgently required as the palm oil industry
that can be easily realized at no cost to the is under tremendous environmental pres-
palm oil mill. The most dramatic change to sure to survive. Never before did the in-
the palm oil industry will be the potential dustry face such a prolonged assault by the

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 Feature Article

critics except the anti-palm oil campaign in The dried fruits now are in perfect con-
the 1980s. It was on the health and nutrition dition for solvent extraction. Solvent extrac-
issues. It lasted only a couple of years. tion is employed to extract oil from oilseeds
like soyabean, sunflower, rapeseed, corn,
To develop a green technology for the in- etc. It was also used to extract palm kernel
dustry is a formidable task. When the palm oil. It was phased out as it was found less
oil industry is in a comfort zone, many po- costly to press out the palm kernel oil using
tentially green technologies have been re- screw press.
jected before they were fully evaluated.
In view of the pressing environmental
The main objectives of sterilization are concern on greenhouse gas emission and
to supply heat to (1) detach the fruits from the much talked about global warming, the
the FFB stalks, (2) stop the enzyme reaction palm oil industry has no choice but to com-
that causes the free fatty acids (FFA) in the promise for a clean technology, i.e. the sol-
oil to rise and (3) condition the nuts for sub- vent extraction technology whereby palm
sequent cracking. Currently large quantity oil is extracted using a food grade solvent
of steam is used to do the job and prolonged or supercritical fluid like supercritical car-
steaming is necessary to allow sufficient bon dioxide. CPO (or a branded palm oil) is
heating of the inner layers of the bulky FFB. recovered by evaporating the solvent. The
To complete a sterilization cycle 70 to 90 min solvent is recovered for reuse. As the sol-
are required. Almost half of the steam used vent extracted oil does not contain any fruit
is exhausted during the sterilization cycle, debris or sludge, no clarification is neces-
the remainder steam ends up as sterilizer sary and therefore no water is needed as in
condensate and it forms part of the POME. the conventional clarification process. This
also makes the whole range of machinery in
It has been demonstrated by Chow and the clarification room redundant. There will
Ma (2009) that microwave heating is able to be no more separator sludge and POME
achieve the objectives of the conventional will be totally eliminated. Thus, there will
sterilization. A very short time (3 min to 5 be no POME to be treated, no biogas gener-
min) is required. However, it works only for ated and no global warming to worry about.
the outer layer of fruits on the FFB or spike- The green image of palm oil industry will be
lets of fruits. The microwave is not able to greatly enhanced.
penetrate into the inner layers of the FFB to
achieve the objectives and prolonged heat- The main concern of this new technology
ing will severely damage the fruits and ker- is the quality of the CPO thus produced.
nels. This has to be thoroughly investigated be-
fore the palm oil industry would consider
Microwave heating can certainly be ap- adopting the solvent extraction technology.
plied to treat individual palm fruits. A sin- The solvent extracted CPO must be at least
gle layer of fruits can be conveyed through comparable if no better than the convention-
a microwave tunnel for efficient heating al CPO in terms of all quality parameters as
to stop the enzyme reaction. At the same well as its refinability.
time, the fruits are sufficiently dried to fur-
ther protect the oil from enzyme attack. The Palm fruit is also known to contain an
heating time can be optimized to condition array of valuable vitamins other than caro-
the nuts for subsequent cracking. This is a tenes and vitamin E. Some are water soluble
dry process. No effluent is generated. and some are not. Since no water is used in
the solvent extraction process, all these mi-
nor components should remain in the oil if

22 PALM OIL ENGINEERING BULLETIN NO. 94

 Feature Article

they are solvent extractable. This will add pay for all the investments needed for R&D.
value to the oil or they can be extracted from The success of the endeavour will ensure a
the oil like carotenes and vitamin E. profitable and sustainable palm oil industry.

The palm oil industry should seriously REFERENCES

consider this proposal. This will overhaul
the whole palm oil business, from A to Z CHOW, M C and MA A N (2009). Process-
of the industry. The extra revenue earned ing of palm fruits using microwave. Patent
will be tremendous. It can easily increase granted No: MY-139951-A.
the OER by 3.5%, i.e. 1.5% from the process
loss and easily 2% from the oil yield from VIJAYA, S; MA, A N; CHOO, Y M and NIK
ripe fruits. From the similar calculation MARIAM NIK SULAIMAN (2008). Envi-
above, this amounts to an increase of 3.15 ronmental performance of the milling proc-
million tonnes of CPO per annum or a hefty ess of Malaysian palm oil using the life cycle
RM 7.875 billion per annum which is much assessment approach. Amer. J. Environ. Sci.,
more than the total research cess collected 4(4): 310-315.
by MPOB over the last 30 years. This can

PALM OIL ENGINEERING BULLETIN NO. 94 23