Oil Palm’s Empty Fruit Bunch as a Sorbent Material in Filter System for Oil-Spill Clean Up

Oil pollution such as diesel poses a significant threat to the environment. Due to this, there is increasing interest in using natural materials mainly from agricultural waste as organic oil spill sorbents. Oil palm’s empty fruit bunch (EFB), a cost-effective material, non-toxic, renewable resource, and abundantly available in Malaysia, contains cellulosic materials that have been proven to show a good result in pollution treatment. This study evaluated the optimum screening part of EFB that efficiently absorbs oil and the physicochemical characterisation of untreated and treated EFB fibre using Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). The treatment conditions were optimised using one-factor-at-a-time (OFAT), which identified optimal treatment conditions of 170 °C, 20 min, 0.1 g/cm3, and 10% diesel, resulting in 23 mL of oil absorbed. The predicted model was highly significant in statistical Response Surface Methodology (RSM) and confirmed that all the parameters (temperature, time, packing density, and diesel concentration) significantly influenced the oil absorbed. The predicted values in RSM were 175 °C, 22.5 min, 0.095 g/cm3, and 10%, which resulted in 24 mL of oil absorbed. Using the experimental values generated by RSM, 175 °C, 22.5 min, 0.095 g/cm3, and 10%, the highest oil absorption achieved was 24.33 mL. This study provides further evidence, as the data suggested that RSM provided a better approach to obtain a high efficiency of oil absorbed.

A review of oil palm fruit fiber reinforced composites

Oil palm fibers have been developed as reinforcement in the composite. These fibers can be produced from fruit, trunk, and frond of oil palm. In this review, the oil palm fruit fiber for reinforcing composite was focused. Oil palm fruit fibers consist of empty fruit bunch (EFB) and mesocarp fruit (MF) fibers. The chemical composition and characteristics of oil palm fruit fiber are described. Furthermore, the mechanical properties of the composite are reported to be related to the surface treatment of EFB and MF fibers. Applications of such fiber composite are included in this review. From some researches, the surface treatment methods for MF and EFB fibers as reinforcement composite was conducted with using alkali, silane, acryilic acid, acetic anhydride, hydogen peroxide, microwave, and superheated steam. The effect of these surface treatments on oil palm EFB and MF fibers displayed the improvement of the mechanical properties (tensile, flexural and impact strengths) of the composite due to enhance the interface adhesion between fiber and matrix after treatment of fibers.

Extraction of Lignin from Empty Fruit Bunch Fiber via Microwave-Assisted Deep-Eutectic Solvent Heating

This work study about the extraction of lignin from Empty Fruit Bunch (EFB). It is a type of lignocellulosic waste produced during the palm oil extraction process. There are three main components of lignocellulosic, which is one of them is lignin. A deep eutectic solvent (DES) with microwave-assisted heating has been used as a process to extract the lignin from EFB and turn it into a value-product. This convenient method was started with the mixing of EFB and DES. After that, the mixture was heated via microwave synthesis reactor at different temperature and time parameters. The extracted lignin yield was dried and ground into a powder form. The highest lignin yield recovered is 30 % by the highest time and temperature. Interestingly, the purity of all lignin yields are above than 80 %. The highest yield of lignin was characterized. According to Fourier-Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectra, there was a significant functional group of phenolic and aliphatic hydroxyl in lignin. Besides, the methoxy group was also configured in lignin spectra. The presence of conjugated alkene also conveyed the characteristic of lignin. The FTIR spectra were intensified with 1H Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectra where there was a chemical shift in lignin and raw EFB which was designated to aliphatic and aromatic protons bonded to a carbon atom. Three regions of decomposition occur in the Thermogravimetric Analysis (TGA) spectra. The initial decompose temperature of lignin was lower compare to raw EFB. Next, second-stage lignin decomposed at 434.14 ℃ with weight loss of 36.21 %. Lastly, for the final stage, lignin decomposes at 552.54 ℃. Moreover, Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) spectra demonstrate that the Tg value of lignin managed to be identified. However, the Tg value of raw EFB cannot be well defined. As for the characterization in residual fractions of EFB, the lowest crystallinity index (CrI) value of raw EFB has proven the presence of lignocellulosic in its structure. The residual fractions that reacted at higher temperatures have an inflated value of CrI as they contain abundant left out cellulose.