Microwave Pretreatment of Oil Palm Fronds for Enzymatic Saccharification

Oil palm frond (OPF) is distinguished to be one of the biomass resources in producing the alternative energy. Hence, in this paper, the practicability of the OPF to be used as biomass resource is studied by examining the reducing sugars composition available inside treated and untreated OPF biomass. Prepared sample of OPF have first gone under microwave and conventional pre-treatment followed by chemical treatment using NaOH. Chemical concentrations of 0 and 0.25N for the pre-treatment time of 2, 4, 8 and 12 minutes have been used. The morphological structure study is performed by using Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and it certified that the surface treated with microwave assisted NaOH is more ruptured. Conventional pre-treatment is the most efficient compared to microwave pre-treatment at “low” setting with a temperature of less than 100°C by being able to liberate the highest amount of sugar yield of 32.31%. However, the reducing sugar yield still can be considered as low, even the filter paper can only liberate up to 28.94% of reducing sugar yield. Nevertheless, the pre-treated OPF still managed to yield more reducing sugars compared to untreated OPF which can only managed to yield sugars of 23.40%. Maximum saccharification yield of 32.31% for conventional heating and 26.20% for microwave pre-treatment is observed at optimal conditions of 0.5 g of dry biomass loading, 97.63 FPU/mL of enzyme loading, T.Reesei and 72 hour of incubation time.
Keywords: Conventional pre-treatment; lignocellulosic; oil palm fronds;TricodermaReesei, Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM