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Palm Oil to Bio-LNG

Your palm oil mill already produces more than palm oil.

In wastewater. In empty fruit bunches. In fibres. In organic residues that are often treated as a disposal problem rather than a business opportunity. The energy market is changing — and what used to be waste can become another revenue stream.

It produces energy. Every day. In wastewater. In empty fruit bunches. In fibres. — Your next product may not come from the fruit. It may come from what is left behind.

You already have a successful business

You don't need another complicated project. You need a commercial reason to invest — not only to meet environmental laws or regulations.

You don’t need another system that creates operational headaches. And you certainly don’t need a biogas plant that exists mainly to satisfy environmental requirements. If you invest, there should be a reason. A commercial one.

You already have: Land · Infrastructure · Feedstock · People · Logistics · An operating industrial site.

How much more value can you create from what you already have?

From compliance cost to profit centre

For many mills, biogas began as an environmental project. A high-performance plant changes the equation.

Biogas as a compliance project: useful, necessary

Capture methane

Treat POME

Reduce emissions

Meet regulatory requirements

Useful and necessary — but not necessarily exciting.

Biogas as an energy business: the same site can now sell

Electricity

Biomethane

CBG

Bio-LNG

Fertiliser

Once you convert residues into enough methane, biogas stops being only a treatment process. It becomes an energy business.

The feedstock is already there

You don't first have to build a supply chain. Your mill already generates the raw material.

That’s what makes palm oil different from many other biogas projects. The raw material exists because of your core business — an enormous advantage. But only if your process is capable of converting enough of it into methane.

POME

Palm oil mill effluent

EFB

Empty fruit bunches

Fibres

Fibre fractions from the process

Other

Other biodegradable fractions

Most biogas plants stop too early

A conventional single-stage digester converts the easy part. Fibre tells you whether the process is really efficient.

Cellulose, hemicellulose, lignocellulosic structures: if biodegradable fibres leave your process without being converted, part of the energy you already paid to harvest, transport and process is leaving with them. That is lost yield. Every day.

Many operators see separated digestate and think:

Waste.

We see something else:

Unproduced biogas.

We have seen this in real plants

Separated solid digestate, fed into an SLP hydrolysis stage — because those solids still contain biodegradable material.

Some of our customers take separated solid digestate from conventional single-stage biogas plants and feed it into an SLP hydrolysis stage. Inside our high-load hydrolysis system, these particles are further broken down and returned to the biological process.

What looked like finished digestate becomes additional biogas. That changes the way you look at efficiency.

The real question about EFB

Not “Can EFB produce biogas?” — but “How much of it can you actually convert?”

Empty Fruit Bunches contain large amounts of fibrous organic material — harder to digest than liquid residues such as POME. But difficult does not mean useless. It means the process has to be designed for fibre.

SLP uses a two-stage biological concept with controlled high-load hydrolysis. The principle is inspired by one of nature’s most effective fibre-processing systems: the digestive system of a ruminant. Instead of one digester doing everything at once, we separate the process into stages.

01

Mechanical preparation

02

Liquid

03

Time

04

Hydrolysis

05

Recirculation

06

Methane

We don't let valuable biomass escape

If digestate still contains biodegradable particles, we return them to hydrolysis. Again. And again.

If there is still biodegradable carbon in the digestate, we want another chance to turn it into methane.

That is how process design increases yield. Not by promising magic — by refusing to throw away usable biology.

More methane changes the business case

A low-performance plant fulfils an environmental purpose. A high-performance plant does much more.

More Biomethane

More CBG

More Bio-LNG

More Fertiliser

More Revenue

from the same mill

And the more efficiently you use your existing residues, the less additional feedstock you need to buy. That’s when biogas becomes commercially interesting.

The circular economy doesn't end with gas

Fertiliser is a major operating cost. Biogas doesn't make those nutrients disappear.

Nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium: with the right nutrient-management concept, digestate becomes part of a circular fertiliser strategy for the plantation.

Plantation

Organic material leaves the plantation.

Palm Oil

The core product.

Residues → Biogas

Energy leaves the system.

Nutrients

return to the plantation.

Energy leaves the system. The nutrients stay in the cycle.

Reduce exposure to one commodity

A second revenue stream from the same site doesn't replace your palm oil business. It strengthens it.

Palm oil has created successful businesses across Southeast Asia. But every palm oil business remains exposed to the palm oil market. Prices move. Margins change. Regulation changes. Energy markets change. The digestate adds fertiliser from the same site: you save fertiliser costs or, with a surplus, sell it.

Palm oil remains your core.

Bio-LNG becomes another opportunity.

Another market. Another source of cash flow.

You don't need more complexity — you need better integration

A biogas project should fit into your operation — not compete with it.

We look at the complete system, not the equipment list

Feedstock

Residue handling

Biology

Gas production

Gas upgrading

Digestate

Nutrient recycling

Operation

Economics

We are not an equipment sales company

SLP does not make its money by selling you as many machines as possible. That matters — because it lets us select technologies from the market according to what your project actually needs. Not according to which shredder, separator or pump we happen to manufacture.

We don’t ask which equipment we can sell. We ask: what creates the highest value from your residues?

57 feedstocks change your perspective

Over 30 years, we've seen far more than our own technology — including what underperformance looks like after commissioning day.

A beautiful plant doesn’t create revenue. A large digester doesn’t. A sophisticated P&ID doesn’t. Methane does. That’s why we follow our projects through commissioning, operator training and stable full-load operation. For SLP, mechanical completion is not success. Stable production is.

57+

feedstocks in anaerobic digestion

30+

years of engineering, build, operation and optimisation

50+

biogas projects delivered

14

countries on 4 continents

750+

biogas energy-efficiency projects

Imagine your palm oil mill ten years from now

Palm oil is still your core business. But your residues are no longer simply treated — they generate another product.

POME becomes energy. Fibres become energy. EFB becomes energy. Residual nutrients return to the plantation. Your environmental performance improves. Your dependence on one commodity decreases. An industrial site that once produced mainly palm oil now produces: Palm oil + renewable gas + fertiliser value. Same mill. More value.

Don't build a biogas plant just because you have to

Build one because it makes money.

If you’re considering biogas, biomethane or Bio-LNG at a palm oil mill, let’s first look at what you already have. Before you invest in another conventional biogas system, find out how much value your residues could really generate.

We start by measuring your potential: How much POME? How much EFB? How much fibre? How high is the methane potential? How much is currently unused? How much fertiliser value is returned?
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