Wood-based industry is one of the main drivers of economic growth in Malaysia. Forest being the source of various lignocellulosic materials has many untapped potentials that could be exploited to produce sustainable and biodegradable nanosized material that possesses very interesting features for use in wood-based industry itself or across many different application fields. Wood-based products sector could also utilise various readily available nanomaterials to enhance the performance of existing products or to create new value added products from the forest. This review highlights recent developments in nanotechnology application in the wood-based products industry.

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Various types of carbohydrate-rich plants with several methods have been experimented to produce sugar and bioethanol. Usually, sugar and bioethanol are yielded by fermentation process synthesized from cellulosic and hemi-cellulosic biomass. In this study, Oil Palm Trunk (OPT) sap was utilized to produce sugar and bioethanol using Saccharomyces cerevisiae (Yeast) as fermentation agent as well as Alanine amino acid (C3H7NO2) and Epsom salt (MgSO4) as nutritional supplements in anaerobic condition with 96 hours duration. The first objective of this study was to produce sugar and bioethanol from three different parts of OPT sap such as upper, middle and bottom part and identify the most-efficient part to optimize. Another objective was to demonstrate the effect of nutrients on fermentation process to determine highest yield. After experimenting fermentation process of 50 ml concentrated OPT sap with 30 ml warmed distilled water for 96 hours, obtained result indicated that upper part of OPT yielded the highest ethanol amount  58.34% (w/w) and sugar 21.14% (w/w) with nutrients.

This study investigates the enzymatic hydrolysis rate of Oil Palm (Elaeis guineensis) Trunk (OPT) sap in terms of the length of saccharification process with the aim to elevate sugar production. Emphasis was placed on the reaction time and addition of supplements such epsom salt (MgSO4) and alanine amino acid (C3H7NO2) to accelerate the efficiency of Saccharomyces cerevisiae containing the enzyme invertase. A whole oil palm trunk was divided into four different sections, upper, middle-1, middle-2 and bottom with separate experiments over 10 days enzymatic reaction period. The highest saccharification rate was shown as 13.47% on the tenth day. This result indicates that the increase in the saccharification rate was positively correlated with the length of hydrolysis. Moreover, the sample with nutrients achieved the highest sugar output, 17.91% on the fourth day of hydrolysis which was 4.44% higher than the hydrolysis rate of the sample without nutrients. In the presence of complex OPT sugars, together with other essential elements, epsom salt and alanine amino acid, S.cerevisiae achieved a higher hydrolysis metabolism to simple sugars as the cells strived to produce energy and regenerated the invertase. Moreover, the upper part of the OPT rendered the highest potential for sugar production with levels of 21.2% with supplements and 15.6% without. From this experimental analysis, a conventional saccharification method was optimized through the addition of nutrients and a prolonged (10 days) hydrolysis process which yielded an increase in sugar production.