Decanter Cake Drying Plant
(DCDP)

Decanter cake is solid waste obtained from decanting process of the palm oil mill sludge. Every 100 Tonne Fresh Fruit Bunches (FFB) processed at mill would generate around 5 Tonne of Decanter Cake (approximately 5%). Fresh Decanter Cake contains certain amount of moisture and has a paste like texture. Decanter Cake is considered as biomass waste which is usually dumped around the mill compound. The caution rise when the amount of dumped Decanter Cake accumulates over times which will caused pollution to soil and river or any water streams.

 

Research has found that Decanter Cake is suitable to be used as fertilizer to certain crops. It can be used as supplement ingredient in fertilizer making process. Due to its high level of organic matter in decanter cake, it is often used in combination with few mill waste products such as Empty Fruit Bunches (EFB), Palm Oil Mill Effluent (POME) and Boiler Ash to produce compost fertilizer too.

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Decanter Cake Drying Plant is designed with purpose of converting wet slurry decanter cake (paste like texture) to dry granular or powdery form. It is achieved by harvesting hot flue gas from boiler and feeding into a long rotating drum where wet decanter cake is fed into the long rotating drum to be spin to dry according to specification required. The heat from boiler flue gas will evaporate the moisture contained in decanter cake. The long rotating drum also serves other benefit. It helps to form small sphere granulation of dried decanter cake. In this form, it would be more workable to be spread as fertilizer in the farm, estates or plantation instead of dried powdery form.

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 Through this simple engineering idea, biomass waste from palm oil mill could be value added through drying and granulation process which eventually would be more environmental friendly and profitable to palm oil millers.

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