Efficacy of pretreating oil palm fronds with an acid-base mixture catalyst

Oil palm fronds are abundant but recalcitrant to chemical pretreatment. Herein, an acid-base mixture was applied as a catalyst to efficiently pretreat oil palm fronds. Optimized conditions for the pretreatment were a 0.1 M acidic acid-base mixture and 3 min ramping to 190 °C and 12 min holding. The oil palm fronds pretreated and washed with the acid-base mixture exhibited an enzymatic digestibility of 85% by 15 FPU Accellerase 1000/g glucan after 72 h hydrolysis, which was significantly higher than the enzymatic digestibilities obtained by acid or alkali pretreatment alone. This could be attributed to the synergistic actions of the acid and base, producing an 87% glucose recovery with 100% and 40.3% removal of xylan and lignin, respectively, from the solids. Therefore, an acid-base mixture can be a feasible catalyst to deconstruct oil palm fronds for sugar production.