The Empty Palm Oil Fruit Bunch as the Potential Source of Biomass in Furfural Production in Indonesia: Preliminary Process Design and Environmental Perspective

Abstract

Empty Palm Oil Fruit Bunches (EPOFB) is a residual biomass from Palm Oil Industry (POI), which known to be produced in large quantity in Indonesia every year. EPOFB is now regarded as a potential feedstock to produce a variety of renewable and valuable biofuel and bio-based chemicals that can be derived from sugar, cellulose, and lignocelluloses, including furfural. Furfural is a bio-based chemical that can be obtained from cellulose that is contained within empty palm oil fruit bunches (EPOFB). Furfural can be used as a platform chemical for the production of a wide range of value-added products, such as the fuel additive methyltetrahydrofuran (MTHF), which is a more environmentally friendly alternative anti-knocking agent compared to lead. However, furfural has never reached commercial use in any significant volume because its industrial development was relatively slow due to the low yield is obtained in the process. This study will explain the potential of waste biomass as EPOFB that can be obtained from palm oil industry in Indonesia. This study will also decide the biorefinery technology design that is applicable in Indonesia to process to be used to convert cellulose and lignocelluloses from EPOFB to furfural; which contains three main stages: separation of the biomass, hydrolysis, and purification process. The process simulation results in 26.58% of distilled furfural from 50 ton/day EPOFB as the basis.