Biomass Potential in Indonesia for Wood Pellets Making

Studies show that biomass resources in Indonesia are rice residues, rubber wood residues, sugar mill residues, palm oil residues, plywood and veneer residues, logging residues, sawn timber residues, coconut residues and other agricultural wastes, municipal solid wastes, etc. Nowadays, the developed pelletizing technology can convert each of these biomass materials into biopellets for heating and power generation. Let’s take palm oil tree wood as an example.
Indonesia is one of the largest oil palm tree plantation countries in the world. According the government data shows, in Indonesia the total plantation area of oil palm is about 8 million hectares, which may increase to 13 million by 2020. The biomass residues of oil palm industry can be used to make feed pellets or biomass fuel. Each year there are at least 100,000 hectors of palm tree should be replanted. This results lots of oil palm wood remained. As oil palm wood is in poor durability, sustainability, the best application of oil palm wood is to made into wood pellets. As a tropical country, the forests of Indonesia can grow fast and people can easily get woods year around for wood pellets making by oil palm tree wood pellet making machine.

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Favorable Factors for Making Wood Pellets in Indonesia
As a developing country, Indonesia has a good environment for wood pellets making, not only in material offering, but also in policies and other factors.
● Ample raw material.
● Less expensive of raw material.
● High quality and automatic wood pellets line which can help reduces material waste and increase efficiency.
● High demand of wood pellets in domestic and abroad.
● Cheap labor force.

Market Potential for Indonesian Wood Pellets
Wood pellets are becoming more and more popular, because of their higher energy density than wood chips, round shape which can make handle and storage easily, and their long durable of burning time, and environment friendly. Therefore the wood pellet market is increasing rapidly and in demand worldly. Wood pellets can be used in electric power generation, house heating, industrial plant etc, and the market is expanding.
Indonesian domestic biomass consumption for heat and power
In Indonesia, biomass consumption are growing. Biomass materials are mainly used in three fields, household, industrial power, and commercial. Among these, household take a great share. Firewood, forest and agricultural waste are the most common used biomass type by Indonesia households.

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Global wood pellet market potential
In nowadays, people pay more attention on environment and sustainable energy. Wood pellets as a renewable energy, environment friendly, easy to storage and transport, begin to gain more market share for the fuel market in the world.
In Europe and North America, Canada, Germany, Sweden, and the United States are the mainly countries producing wood pellets. The mainly consumption market of wood pellets is in Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United States. The United States is a major wood pellet producer and also consumes large amounts of wood pellets every year.
In Asian, the wood pellet market increases year by year. Asia meets its energy supply by importing and most of the wood pellets imported to Asia are mainly for industrial energy field where wood pellets are co-firing with coal and for house heating. The major consumption countries of wood pellets in Asia are China, South Korea and Japan.

South Korea looks to Indonesia for wood pellets
In March, 2009, the Korean Forest Service and the Indonesia Forest Ministry had reached an agreement that to rent about 200,000 hectares (494,000 acres) of forest land in Indonesia to produce wood pellets. As news reported, South Korea launched a wood pellet factory in Siak, Indonesia which mainly export wood pellets to South Korea, the wood pellet factory would process oil palm fruit bunches and kernel shells into pellets. Bunches and kernel shells are waste generated from nearby palm plantations every month.

Jakarta Post reported on September 6, 2013 that Han Gyu-seong, chairman of Korea Association of Pellet, made the statement that abundant forests in Indonesia have the potential to supply Korea with much-needed biomass energy before about 50 Korean business delegates during the “Biomass Industry in Indonesia” business forum organized by the South Korea Embassy in Jakarta. Three forum discussed the prospects and challenges in developing Indonesia’s biomass potential, specifically wood pellets.
With the development of Indonesia, the wood pellet market will expand rapidly, for industrial use and export market in the future.