FACULTY OF ENGINEERING AND GREEN TECHNOLOGY (FEGT)

UALE 1073 ENGLISH FOR ENGINEERING

ASSIGNMENT 1: REPORT WRITING

Tutorial Group Tutors Name Students Names & Id

: :

Mr.Christoper Selvaraj a/l J. Jacob

(12 AGB 04817) (12AGB04699) (12 AGB05939) (12 AGB04839)

: ( KHOR KHAI PHUNG)

(TEOH WEI CHUN)

(HIA YI YING) (LIM AI LING)

DATE OF SUBMISSION:
(19/11/2013)

Riz Woods Sdn. Bhd Batu 4, Jalan Mentakab 28000 Temerloh, Pahang, Malaysia. Tel: 09-296 3265

Date: 19 November 2013 To: Mr. Edwin Tan Hint Yi, CEO of Riz Woods Sdn. Bhd From: Mr. Darren Lee Xi Min, Technical Engineer (initial) Subject: Assessment of biomass-fired electric cogeneration plant.

Introduction In past October, the prime minister has announced that the price of the petroleum increased by twenty cents. Once the price of the fuel has been increased, the other resources will also be affected such as electricity. As a technical engineer, I have the responsibility to reduce the electric bill of our company. According to the survey from oversea company I have done, for 150 tons of wood products are used per day, the plant can generate 4.68 MW of electrical power and 10.3 MW of heat. This is a good result can be compete to the ability of fuel plant. The current electricity usage of the company is 43.4 TWh (terawatts hours) yearly. According to the accountant, the company had paid an estimated amount of RM12 billion a year for the energy cost in manufacturing woods, which is a very hefty amount of money. However, adding a biomass-fired electric cogeneration plant will help the company to generate 21.7 TWh (terawatts hours) of energy which will then be used to manufacture woods, thus reducing the energy cost of the company to an estimated amount of RM6 billion a year.

Body Paragraphs First of all, there are numerous benefits we can get from investment in wood biomass. The main benefit is biomass energy will reduce our companys energy cost by 50 percent. As a result, the cost we saved can be used in other development. Although to build the biomass-fired electric cogeneration plant, we need a large amount of initial cost, however, in next 10 years, we may cover these amount of money by reducing the cost of electrical energy from TNB. Behind our company, there are also a large open space that are not used. By using this space, we can save a lot of money since we can build our cogeneration plant on this space and no need to rent or find another place to build the plant. Besides, biomass energy offers security against energy price fluctuations due to the fuel is going to deplete and the price is keep on rising which may cost our company a lot in energy consumption. Furthermore, biomass energy provides a secure supply of energy to your site since we have a lot of unwanted wood fuels such as sawdust, wood residues, dry wood residues from the wood working and so on that can be used. By using these waste product from our company, we no need to find another ways to manage them.

These also save a lot of costs for our company. From the research we done before, we also found that this kind of cogeneration plant is very stable and safety to be used. Lastly, biomass energy fulfills with environmental legislation because of biomass has zero emission of carbon dioxide, which is a green house gas compare to fossil fuel energy. With this in mind, our company contributes to protection against global warming indirectly. What is more is it enhances our companys fame. Although there are benefits of biomass energy, however, there are still several weaknesses of biomass energy that should be considered. For a start, capital cost of biomass fired power plants is higher than those of gas or oil fired plants due to the nature of solid fuel. But even so, this investment has a payback of around 4 to 7 years with a plant life of 20 years or more. Next, biomass electricity plants need a wide range of typical equipment such as transformers, boilers, heat ex changers, generators, steam turbines, incinerators, fuel dryers etc. when wood burns, it releases harmful gases (such as nitrogen oxides and carbon monoxide) and black soot into the air. The capital cost of building a large wood energy facility can also be high and must be monitored closely to prevent systems failure. Besides, dry wood chips are highly flammable and requires a safer handling. In the other word, we need to gain a few professors which are more experiences in biomass electricity in order to advice us how to run the biomass plant properly and safely. In conclusion, biomass-fired electric cogeneration plant can help our company to save a lot on energy cost in a year and offers security against energy price fluctuations. This cogeneration plant can provide a secure supply of energy to our site besides helping us to solve the waste disposal problem and save cost on transportation to dispose wood dust. The plant also fulfils the environmental legislation and emits fewer pollutants for a cleaner air. Therefore, I suggest that our company should add the biomass-fired electric cogeneration plant as it brings more pros than cons to the company. If there are any question regarding to this report, please feel free to contact this number, 010-6375338 or this e-mail address, darrenlee@yahoo.com.