Furfural production from oil palm frond (OPF) under subcritical ethanol conditions

Abstract

This study focused on furfural production from oil palm frond (OPF) using ethanol under subcritical conditions in a batch system. The study on the effect of reaction parameters (reaction temperature, reaction time, and solid loading) towards the furfural yield were investigated by using OPF. The highest furfural yield obtained from this study was 37.0% (230 °C, 20 min with 1 g solid loading), comparable to other methods using oil palm biomass as feedstock. From the finding, it can be concluded that higher yield of furfural can be achieved at milder reaction temperature (230 °C) and moderate reaction time (20 min) with low solid loading (1 g). The results indicated the importance of temperature in enhancing furfural yield. The effect of reaction time was clearly observed at higher temperature (200–230 °C), while at lower temperature range (100–150 °C), the effect is not clearly observed due to the low yield of furfural. The result suggested that longer reaction time is needed to produce furfural at low temperature range.