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The potential of lignin is huge mainly in refining into biofuels and useful chemicals. Tropical countries have large reserve of biomass; however, lignin is underutilized. Hence, this paper aims to evaluate the lignin potential from biomass and current utilization level in tropical countries such as Brazil, Africa, and Southeast Asia. This paper relevant information is derived from multiple sources, included papers from ISI and Scopus indexed journals, international databases, and online patent search engine. In short, Brazil, has the largest lignin potential, mainly from sugarcane industry, and the highest lignin utilization level at TRL8. Africa had limited information and the least reported amount of studies on biomass available in the studied regions. Southeast Asia countries have oil palm and sugarcane as their largest lignin sources, and a TRL4 lignin utilization level. In Malaysia, oil palm refinery residues are the largest sources of lignin, which are readily to be extracted and processed into value-added products. Lignin utilization industry is also supported by some government policies. In this case, integrated biorefinery is a promising approach in achieving feasible conversion and utilization of lignin in Malaysia, where it adds value to various agricultures wastes produced, while also reducing the waste disposal problems.

The thermal degradation and kinetic analysis for oil palm frond (OPF) and oil palm trunk (OPT) with its ashes were investigated using thermogravimetric approach (TGA). OPF ash, OPT ash and its mixtures are used as a natural source of catalysts in the pyrolytic conversion of the palm oil wastes to bioenergy. The TGA experiments were conducted in a range of heating rates of 10-100 K/min from the temperature of 323 K to 1173 K. Coats-Redfern model is applied in this study to evaluate the activation energy (EA ) and pre-exponential factor (A). The average EA values ranged 24.27-32.36 kJ.mol−1 and 41.42-46.10 kJ.mol−1 for pyrolysis of OPF and OPT respectively. Meanwhile, the average EA values ranged 24.27-31.06 kJ.mol−1 and 31.77-43.45 kJ.mol−1 for catalytic pyrolysis of OPF and OPT respectively.

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