Date Palm Tree Waste Recycling: Treatment and Processing for Potential Engineering Applications

Abstract

Date palm, the most important tree in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East, produces a huge amount of waste yearly in the form of fibrous materials, dried fruits, and seeds. Such waste is a great source of excellent degradable biomass that can be used in numerous applications as natural fiber composites, active carbon precursors, and even nano-featured sheets. That rich resource is yearly burned on date palm farms due to the lack of effective processing strategies. This review offers a scientific evaluation for date palm waste in terms of specifications and applications, and it proposes pre-treatment processes to produce fibrous and powder raw materials to be used in some engineering and industrial applications. Additionally, some possible advanced industrial applications, such as active carbon and natural fiber composites, will be discussed and reviewed.

Evaluation of Different Insecticides Against Lesser Date Moth, Batrachedra amydraula Meyrick, 1916 (Lepidoptera: Batrachedridae) under Field Conditions

“…These valuable plants best grow in warmer areas, flowering and fruit development require high temperatures ideally cultivated in dry and hot areas, and climate change is expected to reduce its suitable production (Allbed et al, 2017;Shahid et al, 2021;Jallat et al, 2022). The date palm is the most valuable tree in the Middle East and Saudi Arabia, however, the vast majority of its annual production is lost as seeds, dried fruits, and fibrous components (Faiad et al, 2022). Its economic average life is forty to fifty years but some can give production still one hundred and fifty years (Chao and Krueger, 2007).…”

“…Egypt is the top most date producing country around 1.6 million tons in 2019, while Saudi Arabia ranked 2 nd position in date production basis in the world FAOSTAT Statistics Division (2021). Date palms are economically valuable trees used as ornamental trees within urban areas (Ahmed et al, 2022), due to their tolerance capability in drought and salinity conditions (Mattar et al, 2021) and there are differences in the concentrations of the date fruits due to location, date variety, soil, fertilizers, and irrigation water (Perveen and Bokahri, 2020). The date palm dry and semi-dry fruits contain both macro and micronutrients which are playing a pivotal role in the functions of the human body and are rich in vitamins, nutrients, minerals, dietary fibers proteins (Rambabu et al, 2020), and a significant amount of carotenoids, phytosterols and Polyphenols (Mia et al, 2020).…”

Lignin-Containing Cellulose Nanofibrils from TEMPO-Mediated Oxidation of Date Palm Waste: Preparation, Characterization, and Reinforcing Potential

“…The agricultural activity related to date exploitation generates a large amount of waste in the form of date palm rachis and leaves that are usually left in the field or even burned. The cellulose content of leaves and rachis are around 55 and 40 wt%, respectively, and their hemicellulose contents account for approximately 20 and 28 wt% [ 4 ]. Further, the lignin content of date palm biomass usually ranges between 22 and 32 wt% [ 5 ].…”

Facile Preparation and Analytical Utility of ZnO/Date Palm Fiber Nanocomposites in Lead Removal from Environmental Water Samples

“…The modification process improves the adsorbent’s affinity toward metal ion uptake and increases its adsorption capacity as the specific surface area and the number of adsorption sites increase. The distribution of the pore size is linked to the chemical structure of the solid-phase extractor, the biomass type of the raw material, and the synthesis of the raw material [ 8 , 9 ]. Chemical or physical modification is applied by loading the adsorbent surface with some donor atoms, such as oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur, and phosphorus, to bind with certain metal ions [ 10 , 11 ].…”