December 6, 2016

Green-tech System could Revolutionize Malaysia’s Palm Oil Industry

Green-tech System could Revolutionize Malaysia’s Palm Oil Industry

Palm oil cultivation can become a lot more environmentally friendly thanks to a new innovation. Photo Credit: emaze

Palm oil cultivation has been a scourge on Malaysia’s environment, but if a small company has its way, the industry will become rather more sustainable. The director of Aqua Ecotech Sdn Bhd (AquaEco), Andrew Liew, says the company has invented a “green tech” palm oil system, which is the “first proven and commercially viable palm oil raw sludge filtration system.”

With its help, the industry could recover RM1.2 billion worth of lost palm oil each year, thereby making operations far more efficient. The invention, dubbed AquaEco-SRORS, “enables the extraction of up to 80 percent of the oil in the raw palm oil sludge,” Liew explained. “This translates [in]to an improvement of 0.4 percent – 0.6 percent in OER,” or oil extraction rate.

Better yet, he added, “there is [a] reduction of bio-gas emission by about 70 percent [on average], and the output of an oil-free filtrate with no suspended solids – which is discharged into waste water treatment ponds.”

If proven to be as effective and commercially viable as advertised, the technology could become a boon to palm oil millers and the environment alike by making the industry not only more cost-efficient but also more environmentally friendly. “Annually, an average mill that processes 300,000 tonnes of crop will be able to recover 1,462 tonnes oil, or 0.5% OER, translating [in]to an incremental revenue of RM3.8 million,” Liew promised.

“This is a really big deal for palm oil millers as this technology drastically reduces the high Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) and Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD) in waste water. This uplift the entire state of the industry to be much cleaner and environmentally friendly,” he stressed.

Andrew Liew, director of AquaEco, says his company can help revolutionize Malaysia's palm oil industry. Photo Credit: MIS Asia

Andrew Liew, director of AquaEco, says his company can help revolutionize Malaysia’s palm oil industry. Photo Credit: MIS Asia

Currently some 450 palm oil mills operate around Malaysia and their average OER stands at 20.65%. With AquaEco-SRORS, their production would increase to 21.15% with existing palm oil fruit produce, which means that there would be no need to grow even more fruit. At a normal palm oil mill, the process of oil extraction results in a discharge of 65% of raw waste sludge, which requires a large number of wastewater treatment ponds to clean.

“Being high in Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) and Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD), this waste releases high amounts of biogas into the atmosphere. If not properly treated, this wastewater is toxic to aquatic life when it inadvertently enters into the land’s many waterways,” Liew noted.

His company’s AquaEco-SRORS system tackles the problem of wastewater by separating the raw sludge into water, solids and oil before it is discharged.  “All oil and suspended solids are prevented from entering the treatment ponds,” he said.

“Without the need to break down suspended solids, treatment pond process becomes more efficient, reducing biogas emission by an astonishing 70 percent,” he added. “The system uses an innovative, self-cleaning membrane technology to filter out suspended solids and oil, leaving a filtrate for further processing or recovery. The oil is recovered back as crude palm oil, while the suspended solid is removed as decanter cake in the decanting process.”

 

3 Comments so far

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  1. Definitely the system is proven. We have a two full scale systems in operation for 3 yrs and another one for 1 year. Contact me and we will show you. There will be more exciting things to come next year now that we can separates the raw sludge into its 3 components.

    1. LaPlazza856Author

      Hi Andrew,

      Thank you for getting in touch. Great news about the viability of your company’s system. Here’s hoping it will be adopted widely and will help the industry become cleaner and greener.

      Please do keep us posted about developments.

      Kind regards,
      Clean Malaysia Team

  2. It is very disappointing to see you website publishes such misrepresentations by a small unknown company that has basically bought a ceramic filtration system which has been around for the past 15 years via 3rd party Chinese company and lie about inventing the technology. The mills mentioned in the article use the CMF system that was purchased from China. There is no invention here. CMF systems has been used in many industries and we directly sold our first system to Sime Darby in 2010.
    Our company is the largest manufacturer of of Ceramic Membrane Systems in the world! As for this small company making false claims their patent is for pre heating the POME in a large holding tank. Jiuwu has over 85 patents that are all files under International patent law.

    Aqua Eco has RM2 paid up capital and the project at the Felcra Mill has caused so many problems that Felcra has demanded the system to be removed form the mill ASAP. They have contacted our company in China and we can’t help them because the system was sold through many middle men and this is total misrepresentation of our technology that has been around for a long time.

    Can the person in charge of Aqua Eco tell everyone what is this self cleaning invention?
    Where does he manufacture the system?
    What happens at the end of 5 years life cycle of the Ceramic Membranes?
    How can they even offer warranty when they don’t even manufacture any of these systems?
    We have invoices with serial numbers that we can show anyone that systems installed in Sandakan mill and Felcra mills were purchased from Jiuwu Tech.

    This company and their claims are total fraud and we welcome if they can prove they “invented” Ceramic Membrane Systems! How can you claim you invented this system when this system has been used by many industries for a long time?

    How can you claim you are first in Malaysia when our company sold many systems directly to customers?

    The total cost of this system directly from manufacturer is less than RM4M for 60MT FFB per hour fully installed with 5 years ORIGINAL MANUFACTURER WARRANTY. How can a RM2 company pretend to invest such system?

    The original Jiuwu CMF system doesn’t require any expensive large holding tank with heating coil inside which costs RM1M just for the tank. Jiuwu original system doesn’t require in batch feed system.
    Our system runs straight flow and it runs 24 hours.

    So having a patent for holding tank which is also common knowledge doesn’t make you the inventor of a technology that has been around for a long time. PAAL of US and Tami of France have the same systems. And they have used the systems in palm oil mills in Thailand and Indonesia.

    Our website is included in this post. Jiuwu tech has over 400 employees including 100 R&D engineers.
    We don’t want any of mill owners in Malaysia to fall victim to fraudulent claims such as Aqua Eco and it’s representative. We work directly with mill owners and we don’t sell through any 3rd part in South East Asia because after sales service is supper important in this business.
    I encourage you to ask these questions from Mr. Liew and ask him to also explain why they charged so much for Felcra system that has not even been running.

    Also even if you buy and use CMF directly from Jiuwu we have to explain to mill owners that cost of electricity for an average system is RM700,000 per year. So the opex cost has be mentioned to mills so they know the exact cost. There is also cost of cleaning chemicals which is about RM70,000 per year.

    If any one has any questions you can email us at the email us at sales@jiangsujiuwu.com

    Anyone is welcome to visit our massive factory in China and we are very transparent about the cost of the system. Problem with small companies like this making false claims is that since they are worth RM2 and have no assets or even revenue (fly by companies) taking legal action against them is also waste of money because they won’t be able to even pay the court fees and they would claim bankruptcy.

    Please do you due diligence before publishing such wild claims but unknown people and unknown companies.

    We have all the proof about how Aqua Eco bought these systems from 3rd party companies in China and we encourage everyone to contact Felcra mill in Ipoh to find out what happened after they installed our system in their mill by non qualified technicians.

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