Lignocellulose into fuel ethanol is the most feasible conversion route strategy in terms of sustainability. Oil palm empty fruit bunch (EFB) generated from palm oil production is a huge source of cellulosic material and represents a cheap renewable feedstock which awaits further commercial exploitation. The purpose of this study was to investigate the feasibility of using steam at 0.28 MPa and 140 °C generated from the palm oil mill boiler as a pretreatment to enhance the digestibility of EFB for sugars production. The effects of steam pretreatment or autohydrolysis on chemical composition changes, polysaccharide conversion, sugar production and morphology alterations of four different types of EFB namely fresh EFB (EFB1), sterilized EFB (EFB2), shredded EFB (EFB3) and ground EFB (EFB4) were evaluated. In this study, the effects of steam pretreatment showed major alterations in the morphology of EFB as observed under the scanning electron microscope. Steam pretreated EFB2 was found to have the highest total conversion of 30% to sugars with 209 g kg−1 EFB. This production was 10.5 fold higher than for EFB1 and 1.6 fold and 1.7 fold higher than EFB3 and EFB4, respectively. The results suggested that pretreatment of EFB by autohydrolysis using steam from the mill boiler could be considered as being a suitable pretreatment process for the production of sugars. These sugars can be utilized as potential substrates for the production of various products such as fuel ethanol.

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The aim of this work was to study the effectiveness of pretreatment methods by developing a comparative study of diluted acetic acid and hydrothermal pretreatment on reducing sugar production and inhibitors formation (Furfural) from the mixed rice biomass. Diluted acetic acid and hydrothermal pretreatment were carried out over a range of temperature (150 – 190 ºC) within 30 minutes to observe the reducing sugar production and inhibitor formation (Furfural). Seamen Model was used to obtain the rate of reaction in depolymerisation of lignocellulosic biomass. This experiment data were fitted the first-order kinetic model to obtain the reaction rate constant of production and degradation of sugar. In addition, Arrhenius equation was used to determine the activation energy of the reaction. From the result, it showed that the diluted acetic acid pretreatment had higher rate on reducing sugar production and inhibitor formation than the hydrothermal pretreatment. The activation energy for the formation sugar in hydrothermal pretreatment is found 29.1 kJ/mol which is higher than acetic acid pretreatment (23.9 kJ/mol).