A study was conducted to estimate the possible environmental impacts arising from the generation of bioethanol from oil palm frond sugar juice in a theoretical oil palm based biorefinery model. A life cycle assessment (LCA) with the gate-to-gate approach was performed with the aid of SimaPro version 8.0 whereby ten impact categories were evaluated. The scope included frond collection and transportation, frond sugar juice extraction, and bioethanol fermentation and purification. Evaluation on the processes involved indicated that fermentation contributed to the environmental problems the most, with a contribution range of 52% to 97% for all the impact categories. This was due to a substantial usage of nutrient during this process, which consumes high energy for its production thus contributing a significant burden to the surrounding. Nevertheless, the present system offers a great option for biofuel generation as it utilizes sugar juice from the readily available oil palm waste. Not only solving the issue of land utilization for feedstock cultivation, the enzymatic saccharification step, which commonly necessary for lignocellulosic sugar recovery could also be eliminated.
In this study, two conditions of empty and partially filled paddy grain (EPFG) (unground and ground) are pre‐treated using a mild hydrothermal process at 120 °C at 30–120 min. The pre‐treatment condition which shows potential structural changes for sugar conversion (gelatinization of starch, reduction of hemicellulose to 11.8%, and increased in cellulose to 43.3%) involves combination of dry grinding and hydrothermal pre‐treatment at 60 min. In this condition, the starch and sugars released in the liquid fraction is high at 127 and 37.1 mg g−1, respectively, which can easily be converted into glucose without the need of enzyme usage. The effectiveness of the pre‐treatment on EPFG structural changes is further confirmed through scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X‐ray diffraction (XRD), showing disruption of structures leading to amorphous biomass. Glucose production of pre‐treated ground EPFG (G‐EPFG) shows higher value at 30.13 g L−1 for 10% solid loading than the untreated samples. Overall, the results suggest that EPFG produced as waste in paddy milling factories can be a potential feedstock for a biorefinery based on the findings and processes derived from this study.
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