Pretreatment of empty fruit bunch from oil palm for fuel ethanol production and proposed biorefinery process.

This study evaluates the effects of some pretreatment processes to improve the enzymatic hydrolysis of oil palm empty fruit bunch (EFB) for ethanol production. The experimental results show that the bisulfite pretreatment was practical for EFB pretreatment. Moreover, the optimum pretreatment conditions of the bisulfite pretreatment (180 °C, 30 min, 8% NaHSO3, 1% H2SO4) were identified. In the experiments, a biorefinery process of EFB was proposed to produce ethanol, xylose products, and lignosulfonates.