Chemical-free saturated steam pretreatment of oil palm empty fruit bunch for improved enzymatic saccharification

Abstract

Oil palm empty fruit bunch (EFB) as the main lignocellulosic residue from the oil palm industry serves as suitable feedstock for enzymatic saccharification, yielding fermentable sugars. Due to complex inter-association between hemicellulose, cellulose and lignin within EFB lignocellulosic matrix, different saturated steam conditions at 140-230 °C, 0.3-2.3 MPa was chosen as a pretreatment strategy, targeted to hydrolyze hemicellulose and reduce crystallinity of cellulose to enhance enzymatic saccharification which need no chemical requirement and potential for energy recovery. As a result, SEM analysis of EFB morphology indicated that the enhanced silica body removal from 190-230 °C of saturated steam pretreatment correspondingly led to substantial 82% removal of hemicellulose. Consequently, enzymatic saccharification yielded between 0.621-0.637 g glucose per g EFB, equivalent to 93-95% of cellulose saccharification by Acremonium cellulase on EFB treated with saturated steam at 210-230 °C. Notably, a short duration pretreatment of EFB at 210 °C for 2 min was proved sufficient for high fermentable sugar production. The potential energy estimated for employing saturated steam pretreatment of EFB in a palm oil mill was sufficient by 2.2 x 10¹² kJ/year.

Keywords:

• Autohydrolysis
• Acremonium cellulase
• enzymatic hydrolysis
• mass balances
• energy estimation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The authors would like to acknowledge the Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE), Malaysia for the provision of financial support SLAB/SLAI to the first author. Thanks to Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Japan (AIST) for the donation of cellulase. The authors gratefully acknowledge to Kyushu Institute of Technology (Kyutech) for the with the laboratory facilities in this research.