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Recent years, great interest has been devoted to the conversion of biomass-derived carbohydrate into sugars, such as glucose, mannose and fructose. These are important versatile intermediate products that are easily processed into high value-added biofuels. In this work, microwave-assisted dilute sulfuric acid hydrolysis of deproteinated palm kernel cake (DPKC) was systematically studied using Response Surface Methodology. The highest mannose yield (92.11%) was achieved at the optimized condition of 148 degrees C, 0.75 N H2SO4, 10 min 31 s and substrate to solvent (SS) ratio (w/v) of 1:49.69. Besides that, total fermentable sugars yield (77.11%), was obtained at 170 degrees C, 0.181 N H2SO4, 6 min 6 s and SS ratio (w/v) of 1:40. Ridge analysis was employed to further verify the optimum conditions. Thus, this work provides fundamental data of the practical use of DPKC as low cost, high yield and environmental-friendly material for the production of mannose and other sugars.

Loss of hemicellulose and inability to effectively decrystallize cellulose, result in low yield and high cost of sugars derived from biomass. In this work, dilute sulfuric acid pretreatment could easily remove most of hemicellulose as sugars. The sugars were successfully used for 2,3-butanediol production with relative high yield (36.1%). Then, the remained solid residue after acid-pretreatment was further pretreated by ionic liquid (IL) to decrease its crystallinity for subsequent enzymatic saccharification. The combination of dilute acid- and IL-pretreatments resulted in significant higher glucose yield (95.5%) in enzymatic saccharification, which was more effective than using dilute acid- or IL-pretreatment alone. This strategy seems a promising route to achieve high yield of sugars from both hemicellulose and cellulose for biorefinery.

Solvolysis of oil palm empty fruit bunches (EFB) fibres using different solvents (acetone, ethylene glycol (EG), ethanol, water and toluene) were carried out using an autoclave at 275°C for 60 min. The solvent efficiency in term of conversion yield was found to be: EG>water>ethanol>acetone>toluene. The liquid products and residue obtained were analyzed using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and gas chromatography/mass selectivity. The obtained results showed that the chemical properties of the oil product were significantly affected by the type of solvent used for the solvolysis process. The higher heating value (HHV) of oil products obtained using ethanol is ∼29.42 MJ/kg, which is the highest among the oil products produced using different solvents. Water, ethanol and toluene yield major phenolic compounds. While EG favors the formation of alcohol compounds and acetone yields ketone and aldehyde compounds.