With the increasing demand in oils and fats worldwide, the palm oil industry in Malaysia has been growing over the past decades. Malaysia is the second-largest producer of palm oil products in the world, producing more than 19 million tonnes of crude palm oil (CPO) annually. This has resulted a high volume of palm oil mill effluent (POME) being generated, as a by-product of CPO extraction from the fresh fruit bunches. POME consists of high organic pollutants, which has to be treated via anaerobic and aerobic systems prior to its discharge to the watercourse. In the anaerobic system, biogas contains mainly methane and carbon dioxide gas. Hence, POME has been identified as a potential resource for bio-energy production in the palm oil mills. In order to recover such resource, biogas has to be captured and converted into bioelectricity via gas engine after the removal of its hydrogen sulphide content. The generated power can then be supplied to the national grid under the feed-in-tariff scheme. However, only limited palm oil mills in Malaysia are eligible for such scheme due to their geographical locations. Thus, in order to further explore the recovery opportunities of biogas, a techno-economic evaluation to upgrade the generated biogas into compressed bio-methane is performed. A mixed-integer linear programming model is formulated to screen the upgrading process based on economic performance. To illustrate the proposed approach, a case study based on a typical Malaysian palm oil mill is presented.
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