Extraction of Cellulose from Oil Palm Empty Fruit Bunch by Physico-Chemical Method

Oil palm empty fruit bunches (EFB) are abundantly and readily available
renewable organic materials generated from the palm oil mills. It could serve as a rich
source of raw material for cellulose derivatives and regenerated cellulose since oil palm
fibre comprises of 44.2%  -cellulose. The scope of this paper is to establish an
environmentally friendly physico-chemical methodology to extract cellulose. Three
treatments were done; autoclave and ultrasonic, autoclave, and ultrasonic. Ultrasonic
treatment with 2% NaOH yielded the highest cellulose percentage which was 80.09%.
The characterization of the celluloses was done by SEM, FTIR, and XRD. SEM showed
the morphological properties of the cellulose. It showed a distinctive difference before
and after treatment. The functional groups present in all samples were the same. FTIR
showed a significance difference before and after treatment. A peak of diffraction angle
ranging between 19˚ to 23˚ indicates the presence of cellulose I. For XRD, the autoclave
and ultrasonic treatment for 2 hours has the highest peak intensity. The crystallinity
index for 1, 2, and 3 hours treatments were 58.70%, 56.96%, and 48.72% respectively.