Viscosity Analysis of Empty Fruit Bunch (EFB) Bio-Oil

Abstract

Empty fruit bunches (EFB) are one of the solid wastes produced by the palm oil industry, which is increasing rapidly. The aim of this paper is to analyse the viscosity of empty fruit bunch (EFB) bio-oil that can be extracted from all solid waste EFB as a sample, and a few processes were executed. The samples underwent two processes, which were pre-treatment and pyrolysis. The pre-treatment involved three processes, namely, cutting, shredding and sieving, which were necessary in order to prepare EFB into a particle size suitable for the reactor. After that, the samples were fed into the feedback reactor as feedstock for the pyrolysis process to produce bio-oil. Once the biooil was produced, its viscosity was tested using the Brookfield Viscometer in two conditions: before and after the chemical reaction. The bio-oil was treated by adding 10 ml and 20 ml of acetone respectively through the chemical reaction. The viscosity test was carried out at different temperatures, which were 25°C, 30°C, 35°C, 40°C, 45°C and 50°C respectively. The observed viscosity of the EFB bio-oil varied and was higher as the temperature decreased. In addition, the viscosity of the EFB bio-oil was higher when it reacted chemically with the acetone added. Therefore, the results showed that the chemical reaction with acetone has the potential to increase the viscosity of EFB bio-oil.

A Comprehensive Review on Biofuels from Oil Palm Empty Bunch (EFB): Current Status, Potential, Barriers and Way Forward

“…Major References Method of bio-oil conversion [32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41] Chemical compound analysis [42][43][44][45] Optimization of process design and parameters [46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56] Upgrading of bio-oil [57,58] Energy and environment [30,[59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68] 2. Conversion of Oil Palm EFB to Bio-Oil: Principles and Processes…”

“…It covers the pyrolysis and liquefaction process in producing bio-oil. The second category is bio-oil characterization and compound analysis [42][43][44][45]. The third category covers the conversion process, experimental design and optimization, including optimal design of reactors to achieve a high production yield, design of experiments, Taguchi Method and other methodologies involved in optimizing the reactors [46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55].…”