Sugar Mill Steam Boilers in Thailand

Biomass has been traditional energy source in rural Thailand for decades, and the biomass is being the main renewable fuel in Thailand industries and manufacturing sectors. Thailand is an agricultural country, after harvesting there will be a large amount of agricultural waste left which could be use as biomass energy, such as bagasse, rice husk, straws and palm shell. Of these, bagasse is the most common used fuel in sugar mill steam boilers in Thailand. Usually, industrial sectors use fossil fuels, including fuel crude oil, diesel, LPG, coal because of its high heating value, its being convenient to use and to transportation. However, as the fossil fuel price has increased accordingly to the fuel price mechanism in the global market, people used biomass fuel to replace fossil fuels to reduce cost of production and to eliminate waste in the plant. And it is true to sugar mills in Thailand.

bagass biomass steam boiler in sugar mill

It is said that there are approximately 107 000 small holders who grow sugarcane in Thailand and it is now firmly established as one of the world's leading sugar exporting countries. Surely, there are many sugar mills, which produce sugarcane waste---bagasse every year. To make full use of the bagasse fiber, sugar plants will use biomass traveling grate boilers which can burn the waste. Bagasse fuels boilers provide heat or power for sugar mills. Sugar Mill Bagasse boilers have big potential in biomass based power generation. Some large sugar mills use bagasse boiler for power generation. For example, the Mitr Phol is the largest sugar producer in Thailand, crushing about 18 million tons cane per year from 5 sugar mills. The bagasse from sugar production is used in biomass power plants with total capacity of 307 MW in which 177MW is fed to national grid around 1000 GWH annually.