Evaluation of Crude Palm Oil Pre-treatment Process as Fuel on Diesel Engine Power Plant

¹ PT PLN (Persero) Research Institute, Jl. Duren Tiga Raya No.102, Special Region of Jakarta 12760, Indonesia
² Departement of Mechanical Engineering, Diponegoro University, Jl. Prof. Soedarto No. 13, Tembalang, Semarang 50275, Central Java, Indonesia
³ Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources, Directorate General of New, Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation, Jl. Pegangsaan Timur, No.1, Menteng, Special Region of Jakarta 10320, Indonesia
⁴ The Mineral and Energy Economy Research, Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Wybickiego 7, 31-261 Kraków, Poland

^* Corresponding author: nurcahyo3@pln.co.id

Abstract

Experimental studies of the CPO (Crude Palm Oil) fuel pre-treatment system for diesel power plants with a capacity of 2 544 kW were carried out to determine the fuel heating temperature requirements and to evaluate the reliability of the pre-treatment system. The fuel pre-treatment consists of the heating process, mechanical separation process and filtering process. The CPO at the booster module was heated from 64 °C to 81 °C by set the thermal oil temperature. The result shows that a minimum CPO heating of 78 °C is required in the booster module to produced kinematic viscosity CPO less than 13 cSt at the engine inlet. When there is a disturbance in the thermal boiler system, CPO deposits are found in the booster module strainer, which clogs the fuel supply to the engine, causing hunting loads. Redundancy equipment is needed to increase the reliability of the pre-treatment system. In addition, it is also necessary to add a heating process through the CPO fuel line starting from the storage tank to the engine inlet so that the thermal loss that occurs can be minimized and the work of the thermal boiler is reduced.