Ethanol Production Potential from Oil Palm Empty Fruit Bunches in Southeast Asian Countries Considering Xylose Utilization

Abstract

Much attention has been paid to fuel ethanol recently, but the use of food resources for fuel ethanol is problematic and the use of non-food resources is anticipated. We are developing ethanol production technology from lignocellulosic biomass subject to milling pretreatment and enzymatic hydrolysis, and also developed new yeast strains which can ferment xylose into ethanol efficiently. We estimated ethanol production potential from oil palm empty fruit bunches (EFB) in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand with our experimental data. Even estimation based on moderate resource availability and without xylose utilization showed 1-2 % of gasoline consumption can be substituted by ethanol produced from EFB in Indonesia and Malaysia. If xylose can be also used as a substrate for ethanol fermentation, its contribution to production increase was significant. The use of other wastes generated in oil palm industry can increase ethanol production furthermore. The ethanol production potential from wasted oil palm trunk in Malaysia is comparable to that from EFB by our estimation which also based on the experimental data. Palm-oil-producing Southeast Asian countries have large ethanol production potential without utilizing food resources.