Combined pretreatment with hot compressed water and wet disk milling opened up oil palm biomass structure resulting in enhanced enzymatic digestibility

Published Date
Bioresource Technology
October 2015, Vol.193:128–134, doi:10.1016/j.biortech.2015.06.074

• Author 

• Mohd Rafein Zakaria ^a,b,,,
• Satoshi Hirata ^c
• Shinji Fujimoto ^a
• Mohd Ali Hassan ^b,d

• aResearch Institute for Sustainable Chemistry, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), 3-11-32 Kagamiyama, Higashi-Hiroshima, Hiroshima 739-0046, Japan
• bDepartment of Bioprocess Technology, Faculty of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 UPM Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia
• cDepartment of Materials and Chemistry, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), 1-1-1 Umezono, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8568, Japan
• dDepartment of Process and Food Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 UPM Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia

Received 13 May 2015. Revised 15 June 2015. Accepted 16 June 2015. Available online 23 June 2015. 

Highlights

• •
  OPEFB and OPFF were hydrothermally treated under isothermal and non-isothermal.
• •
  Hemicellulose dissolution more pronounced at higher temperature.
• •
  Subsequent WDM of HCW-pretreated oil palm biomass unravels fiber structures.
• •
  Fibrillation of pretreated oil palm biomass improved over milling cycles.
• •
  88.5% and 100% of total sugars obtained from OPEFB and OPFF at 150 °C, 240 min.

Abstract

Combined pretreatment with hot compressed water and wet disk milling was performed with the aim to reduce the natural recalcitrance of oil palm biomass by opening its structure and provide maximal access to cellulase attack. Oil palm empty fruit bunch and oil palm frond fiber were first hydrothermally pretreated at 150–190 °C and 10–240 min. Further treatment with wet disk milling resulted in nanofibrillation of fiber which caused the loosening of the tight biomass structure, thus increasing the subsequent enzymatic conversion of cellulose to glucose. The effectiveness of the combined pretreatments was evaluated by chemical composition changes, power consumption, morphological alterations by SEM and the enzymatic digestibility of treated samples. At optimal pretreatment process, approximately 88.5% and 100.0% of total sugar yields were obtained from oil palm empty fruit bunch and oil palm frond fiber samples, which only consumed about 15.1 and 23.5 MJ/kg of biomass, respectively.

Keywords

Oil palm empty fruit bunch

Oil palm frond fiber

Hot compressed water

Wet disk milling

Combined pretreatment

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Supplementary Material

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  Corresponding author at: Research Institute for Sustainable Chemistry, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), 3-11-32 Kagamiyama, Higashi-Hiroshima, Hiroshima 739-0046, Japan. Tel./fax: +81 82 420 8309.

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