Land Clearing Life cycle inventory in the production of biodiesel from palm oil
52 Oil palm plant starts flowering and forming fruit after 2-3 years. The fruit
ripening process can be observed from the change of its skin color. The fruit will turn red orange when ripe. The oil content reaches maximum amount at the time
the fruit reaches its optimum ripeness. If too ripe, the fruit will be detached and fall from the bunch stalk.
The process of palm oil harvesting consists of cutting the ripen bunch, picking the fruits and transport the harvested bunch to the collection point and to
the mill. Harvesting criteria which should be consideredis the harvesting criterion, harvesting tool, rotation, harvesting system and crop quality.
- Harvesting criterion: harvesting criterion is an appropriate indication that can
help harvesters to cut the fruit at the optimum ripeness. Ripening index is when the fruit reach maximum oil content and minimum free fatty acids FFA. At
this time, the general criteria that are widely used are based on the number fruit group, i.e.a plants with age less than 10 years haveless than 10 fruits per fruits
group, and b plants with age more than 10 years old have 15-20 fruits per fruits group. However, in practice, people commonly use criteria with two fruits
groups per 1 kg FFB. One key factor to maintain the yieldvalue is to keep the value of FFA of CPO or CJCO under 5. Under this condition, the biodiesel
process can be carried out using transesterification reaction. If the FFA value is higher than 5, esterification process should be conducted first before
transesterification. The shorter the process will turn to higher yield.
- Harvesting method: Based on the plant height, there are three common methods to harvest palm oil in Indonesia. Squat with dodos is used to harvest palm oil
with 2-5 m height, standing using axe tool is used to harvest palm oil with 5-10 m height, and sickle with long handle egrek is used to harvest palm oil with
more than 10 m height. For ease of harvesting, the stem should be cut first and orderly arranged in the middle of gawangan.
- Harvesting preparation: To deal with harvesting season and in order to make the process run smoothly, collection results TPH should be prepared and the
transportation road should be improved.