Effect of fungal and phosphoric acid pretreatment on ethanol production from oil palm empty fruit bunches (OPEFB)

Published Date
doi:10.1016/j.biortech.2014.02.053
Special Issue: CESE 2013 & Special Issue: ICABB 2013

Author 

• Mofoluwake M. Ishola ^a,b,,
 
• Isroi ^c
 
• Mohammad J. Taherzadeh ^a

• aSwedish Centre for Resource Recovery, University of Borås, Sweden
• bDepartment of Chemical and Polymer Engineering, Lagos State University, Nigeria
• cIndonesian Biotechnology Research Institute of Estate Crops, Bogor, Indonesia

Received 12 December 2013. Revised 11 February 2014. Accepted 14 February

2014. Available online 22 February 2014. 

Highlights 

• OPEFB was pretreated with phosphoric acid, white rot fungi and their combination.
• •
  Phosphoric acid pretreatment improved the digestibility of OPEFB by 24 times.
• •
  Fungi pretreatment gave the highest recovery of 98.7% of OPEFB.
• •
  Ethanol yield of 89.4% of the theoretical value was obtained after pretreatment.

Abstract

Oil palm empty fruit bunches (OPEFB), a lignocellulosic residue of palm oil industries was examined for ethanol production. Milled OPEFB exposed to simultaneous saccharification and fermentation (SSF) with enzymes and Saccharomyces cerevisiaeresulted just in 14.5% ethanol yield compared to the theoretical yield. Therefore, chemical pretreatment with phosphoric acid, a biological pretreatment with white-rot fungus Pleurotus floridanus, and their combination were carried out on OPEFB prior to the SSF. Pretreatment with phosphoric acid, combination of both methods and just fungal pretreatment improved the digestibility of OPEFB by 24.0, 16.5 and 4.5 times, respectively. During the SSF, phosphoric acid pretreatment, combination of fungal and phosphoric acid pretreatment and just fungal pretreatment resulted in the highest 89.4%, 62.8% and 27.9% of the theoretical ethanol yield, respectively. However, the recovery of the OPEFB after the fungal pretreatment was 98.7%, which was higher than after phosphoric acid pretreatment (36.5%) and combined pretreatment (45.2%).

Graphical abstract

Keywords

• Oil palm empty fruit bunches
• Ethanol
• White rot fungi
• Phosphoric acid
• Lignocellulose pretreatment

---

 Table 1

Table 1.

Fig. 1.

• ⁎ 
  Corresponding author at: Swedish Centre for Resource Recovery, University of Borås, Sweden. Tel.: +46 33 435 4585; fax: +46 33 435 4008.

For further details log on website :
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960852414002247