Alkali pretreatment and enzymatic saccharification of oil palm empty fruit bunch fiber for production of ethanol

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1 ISBN Alkali pretreatment and enzymatic saccharification of oil palm empty fruit bunch fiber for production of ethanol Yanni Sudiyani*, Syarifah Alawiyah, Kiky C. Sembiring Research Center for Chemistry - Indonesian Institute of Sciences Kawasan Puspiptek Serpong, 15314, Tangerang, Indonesia * ysudiyani@ yahoo.com; Phone: Abstract Alkali pretreatment of oil palm empty fruit bunch (EFB) fiber was conducted to improve enzymatic saccharification of EFB fiber for ethanol production. EFB as one of the major biomass wastes from palm oil industry is a complex lignocellulosic material consists of % cellulose, % hemicellulose and % lignin. Alkali pretreatment of EFB using NaOH 1 N with varied temperatures 30 and 60 0 C and reaction times 30, 60, 90, 120 and 150 minutes were investigated. Furthermore, enzymatic saccharification of pretreated EFB was examined. The pretreated substrate was subjected to an enzymatic saccharification using meicelase (10, 20 and 40 FPU/g substrate) at 40 0 C, ph 4.5, 100 rpm for conversion of cellulose and hemicellulose contained in palm oil EFB to monomeric sugars. The alkali pretreatment of EFB using NaOH can significantly improve enzymatic saccharification of EFB by removing more lignin and hemicellulose and increasing its accessibility to hydrolytic enzymes. The results showed optimum pretreatment condition was NaOH 1 N at 30 0 C and 90 minutes with optimum component loss of lignin and hemicellulose was respectively 45.8 % and 35.6 %. Saccharification of EFB pretreated by NaOH 1 N (at 30 0 C and 90 minutes) for 45 hours and ph 4.5 result in optimum glucose and xylose concentration mg/ml and mg/ml respectively. Keywords: lignocelllulosic material, oil palm EFB, pretreatment, saccharification, ethanol Introduction Lignocellulosic materials, such as crop residues, grasses, sawdust, woodchips etc., are inexpensive, abundant and renewable source for ethanol production 10. Utilization of lower-value substrates such as lignocellulose offers a great potential for reducing the raw material cost and increasing the used of ethanol as a fuel additive (14). Indonesia is the second largest of palm oil producer in the world. Indonesian palm oil industry generates approximately 15.2 x 10 6 t of solid wastes consisting of oil palm empty fruit bunches, fiber and fruit shell every year. One of the major solid wastes from palm oil industry is empty fruit bunch (EFB) which is a complex lignocelllulosic material consists of % cellulose, % hemicelluloses and % lignin (11), and this lignocellulosic material has a great potency as raw materials for the fermentative production of bioethanol, a promising alternative fuel to gasoline. The major constraint to the development of successful bioconversion process of lignocellulosic materials is the physical protection of cellulose by lignin against cellulolytic enzymes (2). Therefore, for the utilization of lignocellulosic materials in a bioconversion process involving enzymatic hydrolysis followed by fermentation, pretreatment is required in order to break down the complex structure of lignocelluloses and to reduce the lignin content, cellulose crystalline and increase the surface area for enzymatic reactions (14, 8). Alkali pretreatment is a widely used lignocellulosic materials pretreatment approach based on the chemical reaction between alkali and lignocellulosic materials. The hemicellulose and lignin decreased because of its solubilisation in the NaOH aqueous solution. The cellulose increased came from the solubilisation of other components in the NaOH aqueous solution. The alkali pretreatment of lignocellulosic materials could increase its enzymatic hydrolysis rate by removing more lignin and hemicellulose and increasing its accessibility to hydrolytic enzymes (15, 16). The objective of this research was to develop an efficient alkaline pretreatment method for bioconversion of EFB into ethanol and to study the effects of enzyme loadings on sugar obtained after enzymatic saccharification of pretreated EFB. Materials and Methods Raw material Oil palm EFB was collected from an Oil Palm Plantation belongs to PT Perkebunan Nusantara VIII, in Pandeglang, Banten, Indonesia. The EFB was ground to pretreated physically by drying and grinding to get particle sizes that passed 30 mesh 643

2 sieve, then it was stored in sealed plastic bag at room temperature until use for pretreatment. Characterization of EFB The EFB was determined measured for its moisture content by gravimetric method and oil content (Soxhlet extraction) by Soxhlet extraction as well as its lignin, cellulose and hemicellulose contents (Goering and Van Soest, 1970). Pretreatment Alkali pretreatment of EFB fiber was carried out in 200 ml Erlenmeyer flask. 100 ml of NaOH 1N was added to physically-treated-efb samples at 12.5% (w/v) solid loading. The samples were heated at 30 and 60 0 C for 30, 60, 90, 120 and 150 minutes. The conditions of this pretreatment were selected based on previous research on hydrolysis of various lignocellulosic raw materials. After reaction pretreatment, the samples were filtrated filtered to separate the insoluble solid fiber from the soluble fraction. The insoluble solid fiber was washed with water until neutral ph, and dried at C until reached constant weight. The fiber was then determined for its lignin, cellulose and hemicellulose contents (1) to find out the decreasing of lignin, cellulose, and hemicelluloses content after pretreatment. Lignin, cellulose and hemicellulose loss were also calculated. Enzymatic Saccharification Enzymatic saccharification of pretreated EFB fiber was carried out using a commercial cellulase (Meicellase from Meiji Seika, Japan). Two grams of pretreated EFB fiber was added with 50 ml acetate buffer solution 20 mm, ph 4.5 and, respectively. Cellulase was added to the samples at 10, 20 and 40 FPU/g, then, the samples were incubated at 40 0 C, 100 rpm for 48 hrs. Glucose and xylose concentration was determined by Nelson-Smogyi method. Results and Discussion Characterization of EFB Characterization of EFB was carried out for determination of principal components of EFB. Table 1 showed the chemical composition of initial oil palm EFB fiber (before pretreatment). From Table 1, it can be seen that the carbohydrate fraction (holocellulose fraction) of EFB was 56.49% of the total biomass, which consist of 33.25% alfa-cellulose and 23.24% hemicellulose. From the characterization of EFB, it can be seen that the major component of EFB was alfa-cellulose (33.25%), a polymer of glucose which is very potential as a sugar source for ethanol production. The lignin content of EFBs was 25.83%, comparable to the lignin content of hardwoods (18-25%) (11). This high lignin content is the main reason of alkali (sodium hydroxide) pretreatment which would be conduct to pal oil EFB. The main effect of alkali pretreatment on lignocellulosic biomass is delignification by breaking the ester bonds crosslinking lignin and xylan, thus increasing the porosity of biomass (9). Table 1 Chemical contents of oil palm EFB fiber No Components Percentage (%) a 1 Water content Oil content Lignin Holocellulosa : Alfa-cellulosa Hemicellulosa Extractive, others component 4.19 a Composition percentages are on a dry-weight basis The effect of NaOH pretreatment on lignocellulosic components Alkaline pretreatment of lignocellulosic biomass is one of the most effective pretreatment methods which predominantly affect lignin content of biomass. The main effect of sodium hydroxide pretreatment on lignocellulosic biomass is delignification by breaking the ester bonds cross-linking lignin and xylan, thus increasing the porosity of biomass (9). Degradation of lignin and hemicelluloses in the EFBs fiber after NaOH pretreatment are represented as the component loss of lignin and hemicelluloses, shown in Figure 1 and 2. The results show optimum pretreatment condition are NaOH 1 N at 30 0 C and 90 minutes with optimum component loss of lignin and hemicellulose are 45.8 % and 35.6 % respectively. From Figure 1 and 2, the results show that increasing of heating time only affect the loss of lignin and hemicellulose up to 90 minutes and there is no significant effect of heating time after 90 minutes pretreatment on the loss of lignin and hemicelluloses which indicating that the severity of the pretreatment did not show any significant improvement to lignin and hemicellulose degradation. There is also no significant effect of temperature increasing from 30 0 C to 60 0 C on the loss of lignin and hemicellulose in the EFB fiber. An effective pretreatment is characterized by several criteria. The loss of lignin in the pretreatment is one of the most important indicators of pretreatment effectiveness because the presence of lignin impedes enzymatic hydrolysis of the carbohydrates (7). Lignin interferes with hydrolysis by blocking access of cellulases to cellulose and by irreversibly binding hydrolytic enzymes (10). 644

3 Component Loss (%) Lignin Hemicellulose Time (minutes) Figure 1 Loss of lignin and hemicelluloses during alkali pretreatment of EFB with NaOH 1N at 30 0 C in 30, 60, 90, 120 and 150 minutes. 5 Component Loss (%) Lignin Hemicellulose Time (minutes) Figure 2 Loss of lignin and hemicelluloses during alkali pretreatment of EFB with NaOH 1N at 60 0 C in 30, 60, 90, 120 and 150 minutes. As shown in Figure 1, NaOH 1N-pretreatment at 30 0 C for 90 minutes gave optimal condition for delignification of EFB with the loss of lignin reach 45.8 %. The effect of NaOH on enzymatic saccharification of EFB EFB fiber treated by NaOH 1 N at 30 0 C, 90 minutes were subjected to enzymatic saccharification. These conditions were selected based on the highest component loss of lignin and hemicellulose content of EFB (45.8 % and 35.6 %, respectively) during alkali pretreatment. The residual solid of alkali-pretreated EFB was treated with a commercial cellulase preparation, at enzyme loadings of 10, 20 and 40 FPU/g. Commercial cellulase is a mixture of several enzymes. There are at least three major groups of cellulases that involved in the hydrolysis process: 1) endoglucanase, which attacks regions of low crystallinity in the cellulose fiber, creating free chainends; 2) exoglucanase or cellobiohydrolase, which degrades the molecule further by removing cellobiose units from the free chain-ends; 3) β-glucosidase, which hydrolyzes cellobiose to produce glucose (9). The effects of enzyme concentration on the yield of sugar (glucose and xylose) in the saccharification of alkali-pretreated EFB are shown in Table 3 and

4 Glucose concentration (mg/ml) FPU 20 FPU 40 FPU Time (hour) Figure 3 Effect of enzyme concentration on concentration of glucose during saccharification of EFB fiber pretreated by NaOH 1 N, 30 0 C, 90 minutes, ph Xylose concentration (mg/ml) FPU 20 FPU 40 FPU Time (hour) Figure 4 Effect of enzyme concentration on concentration of xylose during saccharification of EFB fiber pretreated by NaOH 1 N, 30 0 C, 90 minutes. Results of this research show that optimum glucose and xylose concentration obtained during saccharification of alkali-pretreated EFB are mg/ml and mg/ml respectively, saccharified for 45 hours. In Figure 3 and 4 for enzyme loading 40 FPU/g after 45 hours saccharification, the concentration of glucose and xylose remain constant. From this result, it can be concluded that optimum saccharification of alkali-pretreated EFB was 45 hours. As expected, higher enzyme concentration results in higher yield of sugar. In the present study, the highest glucose and xylose concentration during saccharification was obtained at enzyme loading 40 FPU/g. However, even though increasing of cellulase loading in the process to a certain extent can enhance the yield and rate of the hydrolysis, it would also increase the cost of the process significantly. Therefore, an appropriate amount of enzyme loading should be considered to obtain optimum saccharification with minimum cost. Pretreatment with NaOH result in high sugar yield of EFBs associated with the reduction in lignin and hemicelluloses content and the increase in cellulose content. Further research will be conducted to ferment sugar into ethanol using SSF (simultaneous saccharification and fermentation) method. Acknowledgements We gratefully recognize the Competitive Project of Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) of fiscal year 2008 for funding this research. We also wish to 646

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