A Zero Waste Production Approach for the Large-Scale Crude Palm Oil Industry Using System Thinking and a System Dynamics Framework

Palm oil industry growth brings along its waste management obligations, at a very large scale. Its solid biomass residue, or waste, has a significant potential for energy resources. This study seeks to improve the knowledge of the dynamic behavior of a complex system from the perspective of a coupled waste and energy system. Based on a system dynamics (SD) modelling methodology framework with a multi-paradigm basis, it intends to employ a full-cycle, iterative approach and closed feedback-loop model structure, clarifying its difference from other studies that tend to have a linear behavior of an open-loop structure. The simulated model couples both the producer and consumer sub-models for introducing a non-linear system behavior using total crude palm oil (CPO) production data input and production ratio of different types of biomass residue materials, to enable an accelerated utilization rate of biomass residue derivative products. The results indicate three cases of growth rate (without and with coupling of sub-models, and with a multiplier coefficient to represent external intervention). This dynamic behavior arises by allowing the current practice of palm kernel shell (PKS) use as biomass fuel to be balanced with alternative biomass fuel such as empty fruit bunch (EFB), accelerating the utilization rate up to 100% of biomass residue (or being zero-waste) by simulated-month 125. This study serves as a valuable reference through the lens of a constructivist paradigm, by elaborating the applications of a full-cycle SD framework on a waste-to-energy system model, based on system thinking (ST), for getting insights into a complex system behavior.

Biomass-residue; Complex-system; Palm-oil; System-dynamics; Zero-waste

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