Long Term Benefits from Oil Palm Biomass
Copyright 2001
BERNAMA THE MALAYSIAN NATIONAL NEWS AGENCY
October 16, 2001
KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 16 (Bernama) -- The initial capital outlay to further develop the oil palm biomass-based pulp and paper industry may be immense but the long term benefits are tremendous, said Dr Mohamad Husin, a principal research officer from the Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB).
"The beauty of oil palm biomass is that it is available in large quantities which can be processed into pulp and paper," he said.
"A paper mill will use up 1,000 tonnes of pulp and that means we have to cut down trees to get supplies of natural wood. We need thousands of hectares of forests for this. But if we use oil palm biomass, we don't have to do that. By using oil palm biomass will enable us to protect our forests as well as other countries' forests and the environment," he said. In an interview in conjunction with a seminar on Palm Biomass: Opportunities For Commercialisation here today, Dr Mohamad said the usage of oil palm biomass-based pulp and paper would help the environment because the usual practice in the industry was to dump the biomass back to the field or burn them and this would pollute the environment.
Another advantage from using oil palm biomass is that Malaysia, now a net importer of pulp, need not import it anymore.
"This is because we have the raw material. At the same time we can export (the pulp) to other countries and this can generate income to the country," he said
Dr Mohamad said pulp and paper used from oil palm biomass can be used in many ways such as cigarette paper and bond papers for writing.
His involvement in research and development in processing oil palm biomass into pulp paper started back in the 1982 following a collaboration between the Palm Oil Research Institute of Malaysia (PORIM) and the Government Industrial Research Institute of Shikoku, Japan (GIRIS).
Dr Mohamad said research had focused on "kraft" (or strong in German) pulp and paper. Studies had indicated that kraft pulp from oil palm biomass is suitable for producing cement paper.