A Life Cycle Assessment of Cofiring in a Coal Power Plant to Estimate Purchasing Cost of Empty Fruit Bunch Pellets

Abstract

This study aims to analyze the potential emission reduction of cofiring 5% energy supplied from oil palm empty fruit bunch (EFB) pellets and to calculate the purchasing price by incorporating the carbon price. A life cycle assessment (LCA) is used with a functional unit of 1 kWh of electricity. The scope of this study comprises the material collection, pellet production, material transportation and power generation. The foreground inventories were gathered from pellet pilot plants in Cibinong, Indonesia, as a case study, supported by relevant background data from the literature. According to this study, utilization of oil palm biomass converted into pellet for cofiring offer a promising solution for global warming potential (GWP) mitigation, in which 0.1 kg CO₂eq/kWh or 8.57% CO₂eq emissions can be reduced in a power plant. At 5% cofiring, a typical 500 MW power plant can utilize 112,940 t EFB to substitute 87,118 t coal; therefore, utilizing EFB can reduce GHG emissions by 0.285 Mt CO2eq annually in the power plant. Furthermore, the carbon tax savings obtained from emission reduction can be utilized to elevate the purchasing price of pellets up to 65.34 USD/t (9.83% increase from current practice) to attain it more competitive.