title: Combined pretreatment with hot compressed water and wet disk milling opened up oil palm biomass structure resulting in enhanced enzymatic digestibility.
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.
authors.affiliation: Research Institute for Sustainable Chemistry, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), 3-11-32 Kagamiyama, Higashi-Hiroshima, Hiroshima 739-0046, Japan; Department of Bioprocess Technology, Faculty of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 UPM Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia. Electronic address: mohdrafein@upm.edu.my.
authors.forename: Mohd Rafein
authors.initials: MR
authors.lastname: Zakaria
authors.affiliation: Department of Materials and Chemistry, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), 1-1-1 Umezono, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8568, Japan.
authors.forename: Satoshi
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Hirata
authors.affiliation: Research Institute for Sustainable Chemistry, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), 3-11-32 Kagamiyama, Higashi-Hiroshima, Hiroshima 739-0046, Japan.
authors.forename: Shinji
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Fujimoto
authors.affiliation: Department of Bioprocess Technology, Faculty of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 UPM Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia; Department of Process and Food Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 UPM Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia.
authors.forename: Mohd Ali
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Hassan
mesh_terms: D028023:Arecaceae / Q000737:chemistry*; D018533:Biomass; D002480:Cellulase / Q000737:chemistry; D002482:Cellulose / Q000737:chemistry; D005638:Fruit / Q000737:chemistry; D005947:Glucose / Q000737:chemistry; D006358:Hot Temperature; D000073878:Palm Oil; D010938:Plant Oils / Q000737:chemistry*; D014867:Water / Q000737:chemistry*
chemical_list: D010938:Plant Oils; D014867:Water; D000073878:Palm Oil; D002482:Cellulose; D002480:Cellulase; D005947:Glucose
keywords: Combined pretreatment; Hot compressed water; Oil palm empty fruit bunch; Oil palm frond fiber; Wet disk milling