Palm oil mill derived empty palm fruit bunches as a feed stock for renewable energy applications in Nigeria: A review

A significant amount of biomass is generated through palm oil production and a lot of interest has been devoted to valorizing the oil palm biomass into value-added products. Nigeria is working to strengthen its oil palm production in the face of an economic crunch and the demand for edible oil and the other value-added products obtained from palm oil biomass. Palm empty fruit bunch (EFB) is one of the major waste products from palm oil processing and is largely regarded as waste that is dumped to rot away. This treatment of EFB poses challenges to the environment due to the greenhouse gases emitted from decaying EFB. Also, the opportunity to extract useful energy is lost in this way. There is increased demand from Western countries under the aegis of the Renewable Fuel Standard Program and the European Union Renewable Energy Directive for sustainable palm oil production. The increased demand leads to the requirement for increased disposal of palm oil biomass which is creating both problems and interesting new opportunities. This paper reviews the potential of utilizing EFB, which is regarded as waste, for renewable energy generation in Nigeria. The sustainable utilization of EFB for energy applications was emphasized and recent advances as per EFB conversion processes versus use in generating energy in a sustainable way were critically reviewed.