Palm Oil Engineering Bulletin No.140 (May - Aug 2022) p14-24
Comparison of Compositional Analysis of Oil Palm Biomass
Soek Sin Teh* and Soh Kheang Loh*

The growing desirability to use oil palm biomass (OPB) as a carbon-rich feedstock for bio-conversion into valueadded products has prompted need for a rapid and reliable method to determine fiber compositions and extract them from OPB. However, compositions and percentages of fiber components in OPB are dependent on cultivar, origin and other environmental factors which pose difficulties for researchers to compare with literature data. In order to solve the above, this study was aimed at screening all relevant literature and identifying a few most relevant methods for further verification. Three most commonly used methods for each individual component (cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin) of OPB were selected for the fiber compositional analysis. The results were compared in term of reaction time, reaction temperature and sampleto- chemical ratio in attempting to conclude the most costeffective and suitable rapid method. The methods by Then et al., 2014; Teramoto et al., 2009 and Kirk et al., 1998 used less chemicals (lower sample-to-chemical ratio) and energy (lower reaction temperature), and less timeconsuming (shorter reaction time); hence were the most suitable for individual holocellulose, α-cellulose and lignin determination of OPB. This study contributes to method verification in order to accelerate bio-processing of OPB feedstocks into value-added products.



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Author information:
*Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB), 6 Persiaran Institusi, Bandar Baru Bangi, 43000 Kajang, Selangor, Malaysia.

E-mail: ssteh@mpob.gov.my