18 ABSTRACT KEYWORDS Journal of Energy & Environment Journal homepage: www.uniten.edu.my/jee Pre-treatment of Empty Fruit Bunch for Biofuel Production N.A. Amin 1* , N. Ya’aini 1 , M. Misson 1 , R. Haron 1 , M. Fadhzir 1 , A. Kamaroddin 1 1 Chemical Reaction Engineering Group (CREG), Faculty of Chemical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor, Malaysia 1. INTRODUCTION Recently, many research programs are devoted to the development of renewable resources as a source for alternative energy. Major types of renewable resources include wind, solar and biomass. EFB is one type of biomass found abundant in Malaysia due to the oil palm industry [1]. Pyrolysis of biomass produces fuels in three phases; gas, liquid and char. Biomass consists of three major components: cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin. Lignin is the most complex structure compared to hemicellulose and cellulose and requires high temperature to be degraded. Therefore, biomass are pre-treated using either chemical or enzymes prior to pyrolysis in order to degrade the lignin structures for obtaining higher liquid yields with improved properties [2,3]. Chemical pre-treatments using acid and alkaline pre- treatment have been widely reported as a potential technique for lignin degradation [3]. Effect of sodium hydroxide (NaOH) and hydrogen peroxide (H 2 O 2 ) in decomposing cotton stalks lignin and pre-treatment with calcium hydroxide [Ca(OH) 2 ] are some examples [4]. Thus, chemical pre-treatment could isolate the lignocellulosic components, disassemble the biomass chains and increase the accessible surface area of EFB to produce important chemicals during pyrolysis [5]. For the enzymatic pre-treatments, two groups of peroxidases, lignin peroxidase (LiP) and manganese peroxidase (MnP) have been reported as having great potentials in biological treatment for degrading lignin structures. LiP enzyme is a more powerful oxidant compared to typical peroxidases, and consequently oxidized not only the usual peroxidase substrates but also a variety of non-phenolic lignin structures [6, 7]. Unlike LiP enzyme, MnP enzyme is not as strong and is consequently unable to attack non-phenolic structures that predominate in the lignin. Pyrolysis process is best suited for conversion of biomass to liquid fuel. It is a thermo-chemical conversion process in the absence of air or oxygen [8]. Different conditions of the pyrolysis process have led to the formation of products in different proportions of useful liquid oil, gases and solid [9]. In this study, the pyrolysis experiment was performed by using a semi-batch reactor under nitrogen gas condition and HZSM-5 as the catalyst with the ratio of catalyst and EFB, 5 wt%. The application of bio-oil as a fuel in boiler systems, stationary diesel engines, gas turbines, and sterling engines had been widely reported [10,11]. However, poor volatility, high viscosity, coking and corrosiveness of crude bio-oil have limited the application mentioned above. Therefore, a number of bio-oil upgrading technologies were proposed to improve the product properties and to increase the range of possible applications [10]. The main objective of this study is to investigate the potential of chemical and enzymatic pre-treatments for EFB conversion to biofuel. The EFB samples were then catalytically pyrolyzed while the resulting bio-oils were further upgraded by reactive distillation to improve the properties of the oil including heating value, water content, viscosity, and acid content. © 2011 Universiti Tenaga Nasional. All rights reserved. A new method to convert biomass to valuable chemicals and fuels has been investigated. Empty fruit bunch (EFB) was chemically and biologically pre-treated to enhance the quality of biofuel and reduce undesired components such as alcohols, ketones and nitrogenated compounds. For chemical pre-treatment, product analysis indicated bio-oil contained mixtures of esters at 21 wt% yield and acids at 42 wt% yield with minimal phenolic compounds. Meanwhile in biological pre-treatment, lignin peroxidase (LiP) enzyme was the powerful oxidant compared to MnP enzyme with 71.69% of lignin was degraded by LiP enzyme and 67.94% from manganese peroxidase (MnP) enzyme. Treated EFB produced higher conversion and liquid oil yield. Further oil up-grading has improved the heating value and reduced water content, thus the bio-oil can be conveniently processed for further use. This new method provides an alternative technique for producing important chemicals and fuels from biomass. Pre-treatment EFB Pyrolysis Upgrading *Corresponding author E-mail address: N.A. Amin < noraishah@cheme.utm.my>. Tel.: +607-553-5579; Fax: +607-558-1463