No abstract

Microwave heating technique is one of the most attractive alternative applications in the thermal conversion process. In addition, microwave pyrolysis is one of the thermochemical technologies using microwave irradiation heating in order to obtain biofuels and materials from biomass. Microwave pyrolysis not only overcomes the disadvantages of conventional pyrolysis methods such as slow heating, but also improves the quality of final pyrolysis products. Recently, the biomass from oil palm wastes (empty fruit bunch, oil palm shell and oil palm fiber) has been gaining more attention in order to produce the biochar. In addition, biochar is important for sequestering carbon and as an effectively additive to improve soil fertility, aid sustainable production, reduce contamination of water streams. This paper focused on the comparison of biochar characteristics produced from oil palm biomass via microwave heating and conventional heating. Analysis on the characteristics of the biochar includes its physical properties, proximate and elemental analysis, the Brunauer- Emmet- Teller (BET) surface area and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM).

No abstract

The demands for an antimicrobial agent of natural origin has increasingly grown in recent years due to the adverse health effects from the long-term application of conventional chemical-based agent. To date, there are very few reports available on the use of pyroligneous acid produced in optimized condition, as antimicrobial agent. Thus, this study reports on the evaluation of the antimicrobial properties of oil palm fiber-derived pyroligneous acid produced using microwave heating at optimum condition (MWPA). The optimized MWPA was concentrated and extracted using ethyl acetate and was further determined for its antimicrobial properties against Gram positive and Gram negative bacterial strains through Minimum Inhibitory Concentration (MIC) and Minimum Biocidal Concentration (MBC) analysis. Results obtained shows that MWPA exhibited high inhibition zone that varied between 13 ± 0.58 to 28.67 ± 0.88 mm toward all strains screened in the present study with low range of MIC value from 0.651 ± 0.13 to 1.563 ± 0.00 mg/ml. This indicated that CPAEA MWPA derived from OPF exhibited a strong antimicrobial activity and might be projected as alternative natural source as antimicrobial agent.

Malaysia has been acknowledged as one of the largest producer and exporter in the production of oil palm biomass. This is not surprisingly that industry contributes massive amount of the waste such as empty fruit bunches, palm mesocarpfibre, and palm kernel shell. This abundance of oil palm by-products make them an attractive source of raw material for the production of activated carbon. The activated carbon has been widely used in variety industries such as bio-catalyst, removal of toxic substance, purification of liquid and gas as well as catalyst support. The comparison of characteristic of oil palm activated carbon produced via microwave and conventional heating has been discussed in this paper. The characterization of the activated carbon includes elemental analysis, the Brunauer-Emmet-Teller (BET) surface area as well as Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) has been analyzed in this study.Hence, from the result, it shows that the SEM micrograph of oil palm shell (OPS) activated carbon prepared via microwave heating by using chemical activation produced the clearly and uniformly pore compared to full cavity and not well formed of pore in oil palm shell (OPS) activated carbon via conventional heating.