Affiliations 

  • 1 Chemical Engineering Discipline, School of Engineering, Monash University, Jalan Lagoon Selatan, 47500 Bandar Sunway, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia
  • 2 Chemical Engineering Discipline, School of Engineering, Monash University, Jalan Lagoon Selatan, 47500 Bandar Sunway, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia. Electronic address: wu.ta.yeong@monash.edu
  • 3 Chemical Engineering Discipline, School of Engineering, Monash University, Jalan Lagoon Selatan, 47500 Bandar Sunway, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia; Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP), School of Engineering, Monash University, Jalan Lagoon Selatan, 47500 Bandar Sunway, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia
  • 4 School of Science, Monash University, Jalan Lagoon Selatan, 47500 Bandar Sunway, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia
  • 5 Department of Chemical and Process Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Built Environment, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600 UKM Bangi, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia
  • 6 Department of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Bioresour Technol, 2018 Feb;249:818-825.
PMID: 29136937 DOI: 10.1016/j.biortech.2017.07.165

Abstract

Deep eutectic solvents (DESs) have received considerable attention in recent years due to their low cost, low toxicity, and biodegradable properties. In this study, a sequential pretreatment comprising of a DES (choline chloride:urea in a ratio of 1:2) and divalent inorganic salt (CuCl2) was evaluated, with the aim of recovering xylose from oil palm fronds (OPF). At a solid-to-liquid ratio of 1:10 (w/v), DES alone was ineffective in promoting xylose extraction from OPF. However, a combination of DES (120°C, 4h) and 0.4mol/L of CuCl2 (120°C, 30min) resulted in a pretreatment hydrolysate containing 14.76g/L of xylose, remarkably yielding 25% more xylose than the CuCl2-only pretreatment (11.87g/L). Characterization studies such as FE-SEM, BET, XRD, and FTIR confirmed the delignification of OPF when DES was implemented. Thus, the use of this integrated pretreatment system enabled xylose recoveries which were comparable with other traditional pretreatments.

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.