Philippines industrial boiler for rice industry and sugar factory

Steam boilers provide energy for Philippine rice and sugar mills, including steam boilers and power plant boilers.

Rice is the staple diet in the Philippines. Filipinos are amongst the world’s biggest rice consumers. The average Filipino consumes about 100 kilograms of rice per year. Though rice is produced throughout the country, Central Luzon and Cagayan Valley are the major rice growing regions, with more than 1.2 million hectares of rice producing areas. The country produced about 16 million tons of rice in 2015. This rice production gives an estimated production of rice husks of more than 2 million tons per annum. This is the equivalent of approximately 5 million barrels of oil in terms of energy. Rice straw is another important biomass resource with a potential production of about 5 million tons per annum.

In 2006, the Philippines government passed the Biofuels Act. This was aimed at the sugar industry in the Philippines, which is the major source of ethanol and domestic sugar, and a major agricultural industry. About 380,000 hectares of land is devoted to sugarcane cultivation, and it is estimated that 1.17m tons of sugarcane waste is recoverable as a biomass resource in the Philippines. In addition, 6.4m tons of surplus bagasse is available from local sugar mills. There are 29 operating sugar mills in the country with an average capacity of 6,900 tons of sugarcane waste per day. The majority of these mills are located in Negros Province, which supplies about 46 percent of the country’s annual sugar production.

Therefore, rice husk and bagasse are the most suitable fuel for boilers, not only for sugar mills and rice mills to reuse energy, but also to reduce fuel costs.