A Study on the Potential of Electricity Generation from Cassava Rhizome in Eastern Region Area of Thailand

In this study, the objective was to investigate the quality and suitability of processing, improving the quality of waste biomass from cassava growing in east region area of Thailand. There is a method for studying quantitative data from the land use database together with the geographic information system. And the physical quality and chemical properties of cassava rhizomes have been studied from the analysis of cassava rhizome samples in the laboratory. The results of the study found that east region area of Thailand is the biggest area for cassava cultivation in Thailand. Crop residual ratio (CRR) of cassava rhizome was 0.112 with the total remaining amount of 636,003.35 tons/year (~53.40% wb moisture content and 8.19 MJ/kg heating value). It was estimated that the total amount of cassava rhizome ready to use as biomass with chip/pellet grade at moisture content of ~10.17% wb. and heating value of ~12.50 MJ/Kg is 89,040 tons/year, having equivalent energy of 1,113.01 GJ or 26.58 ktoe. This could be used to produce electricity of 61.8 GWh or used to supply power plants with total capacity of 8.8 MW.