Robust enzymatic hydrolysis of Formiline-pretreated oil palm empty fruit bunches (EFB) for efficient conversion of polysaccharide to sugars and ethanol

Published Date
August 2014, Vol.166:584–591, doi:10.1016/j.biortech.2014.05.102

Author 

• Xingkai Cui ^a
• Xuebing Zhao ^a,,
• Jing Zeng ^a
• Soh Kheang Loh ^b
• Yuen May Choo ^b
• Dehua Liu^a

• aInstitute of Applied Chemistry, Department of Chemical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
• bMalaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB), 6, Persiaran Institusi, Bandar Baru Bangi, 43000 Kajang, Selangor, Malaysia

Received 24 April 2014. Revised 22 May 2014. Accepted 23 May 2014. Available online 3 June 2014. 

Highlights

• Formiline fractionating pretreatment of oil palm empty fruit bunches.
• •
  Excellent cellulose digestibility and fermentability obtained.
• •
  High sugar concentration achieved by enzymatic hydrolysis.
• •
  Over 80 g/L ethanol obtained during simultaneous saccharification and fermentation.

Abstract
Oil palm empty fruit bunch (EFB) was pretreated by Formiline process to overcome biomass recalcitrance and obtain hemicellulosic syrup and lignin. Higher formic acid concentration led to more lignin removal but also higher degree of cellulose formylation. Cellulose digestibility could be well recovered after deformylation with a small amount of lime. After digested by enzyme loading of 15 FPU + 10 CBU/g solid for 48 h, the polysaccharide conversion could be over 90%. Simultaneous saccharification and fermentation (SSF) results demonstrated that ethanol concentration reached 83.6 g/L with approximate 85% of theoretic yield when performed at an initial dry solid consistency of 20%. A mass balance showed that via Formiline pretreatment 0.166 kg of ethanol could be produced from 1 kg of dry EFB with co-production of 0.14 kg of high-purity lignin and 5.26 kg hemicellulosic syrup containing 2.8% xylose. Formiline pretreatment thus can be employed as an entry for biorefining of EFB.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

• Empty fruit bunch
• Formiline pretreatment
• Enzymatic hydrolysis
• Delignification
• Biorefining

---

 Table 1

Table 1.

Fig. 1.

Fig. 2.

 Table 2

Table 2.

Fig. 3.

Fig. 4.

• PDF (104K)

Supplementary data

• ⁎ 
  Corresponding author. Tel./fax: +86 10 62772130.
  
  

For further details log on website :
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960852414008104