FACULTY OF ENGINEERING AND GREEN TECHNOLOGY (FEGT)

UALE 1073 ENGLISH FOR ENGINEERING

ASSIGNMENT 1: REPORT WRITING

Tutorial Group : 1

Tutor’s Name : Mr.Christoper Selvaraj a/l J. Jacob

Students’ Names & Id : ( KHOR KHAI PHUNG) (12 AGB 04817)

(TEOH WEI CHUN) (12AGB04699)

(HIA YI YING) (12 AGB05939)

(LIM AI LING) (12 AGB04839)

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 company’s 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 company’s 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.