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Papermaking in Malaysia is basically based on recycled (secondary) fibers which are sourced from various parts of the world with prices depending on the quality of the fibers procured. The costs of paper production could possibly be reduced by using local fibers as partial replacement provided that the strength requirements are not compromised; and one such type is the oil palm fibers which are obtained as the by-product of the palm oil industry. This paper reports the use of the oil palm empty fruit bunch (OPEFB) fiber as a partial substitute in the production of corrugating medium. Both unbleached and totally chlorine free (TCF) bleached OPEFB pulps were mixed in different ratios with high quality recycled pulps which had been mechanically and chemically treated. Burst strength results indicate as high as 70% recycled pulp can be replaced by OPEFB pulps yet still having strength properties that are comparable with the industrial produced corrugating medium. Although the effect of bleached pulp is significant at high addition levels of more than 70%, the cost-energy balance will not be effective to use these bleached fibers, and furthermore the utilization of unbleached pulps also gave the same desired results. The use of the underutilized OPEFB fibers for replacement of imported recycled fibers without compromising the paper strength qualities could help the Malaysian paper industry in their quest for finding fiber alternatives.

The effect of drying techniques on the crystallinity and thermal stability nanocrystalline cellulose (NCC) prepared from oil palm empty fruit bunch (OPEFB) via the TEMPO-oxidation process was investigated. NCC was subjected to three separate drying techniques viz. oven drying (OD), freeze drying (FD) and solvent exchange (SE). The crystallinity and thermal properties were investigated for all samples using DSC and X-ray diffraction (XRD). There is no significant difference in the degree of crystallinity for both OD-NCC and FD-NCC as compared to the starting material of unbleached pulp (UP) (72% vs 76%), however SE-NCC showed a tremendous reduction with the crystallinity of only 40%. Both OD-NCC and FD-NCC have almost similar thermal behavior but the SE-NCC showed a significant difference. For the application of NCC in non-polar bionanocomposites, both OD-NCC and FD-NCC is recommended due to its relatively superior thermal stability and a higher crystallinity index.

Pulp from the oil palm empty fruit bunches (EFB) was extracted via Alkaline Peroxide Pulping (APP). The pulping process was conducted through three main steps; dewaxing of EFB, impregnation of alkaline peroxide (AP) into EFB and refining of biomass to finally produce the pulp. The varying peroxide levels and number of impregnation stages were found to affect the refining energy consumption and the properties of the resultant pulp and paper. Diagnosis by electron microscopic imaging revealed a strong correlation between paper properties development and paper surface morphologies. By multiplying the stages of the low alkaline peroxide level (2:2.5% AP) impregnation, refining energy could be reduced by 30% while improving brightness and paper mechanical properties. Higher alkaline peroxide level (4:5% AP) could reduce the refining energy by 50% while still improving brightness. Beyond these AP levels (8:10% AP), refining energy could be reduced by 67% by increasing the number of impregnation stages, with positive effects on brightness and paper mechanical properties. The findings suggest that increasing the AP impregnation stages had exposed more active sites to react with AP. The enhanced AP accessibility to EFB structures facilitated mechanical fibrillation of EFB vascular bundles through the refining process. The proper synergy between AP and the adopted mechanical refining was the factor that triggered the liberation of nanocells from EFB biomass and this had ultimately improved paper properties.

Chlorine-free bleaching was carried out on kraft pulp from oil palm empty fruit bunches (EFB) with an oxygen (O2) - acid (H2SO4) - ozone (O3) - hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) bleaching sequence. The κ-number (= an indicator of lignin content) of the pulp was reduced considerably after these processes indicating that most of the lignin present in the pulp can be removed using this chlorine-free sequence. Handsheets of both bleached and unbleached EFB pulp were prepared and their paper properties were determined. Brightness, a measure of the whiteness of paper, was achieved to ca. 75% for the bleached EFB pulp, showing a possibility of achieving 80% of brightness by chlorine-free bleaching. Paper strengths as indicated by tensile, tear and burst indices as well as stretch did not show significant differences between before and after bleaching. It is notable that these results were obtained despite a large decrease in viscosity by the bleaching process. Moreover, the EFB bleached pulp showed comparable strengths to hardwood pulps, indicating that EFB has the potential as a raw material for chemical pulp production using chlorine-free bleaching sequences.

Desired pulp-based product properties can be achieved by addition of filler in the pulp network. In exploring this, fines co-generated upon refining the alkaline peroxide treated oil palm empty fruit bunches (EFB) were collected based on their passage and retention capacities when subjected to varying mesh-sizes stainless-steel square mesh wires. Pulp network incorporating fines produced from the synergy of low alkaline peroxide (AP) and low energy refining effects shows that blending 12% of the 400-mesh fines (P300/R400) with the normal 200-mesh pulp fraction enhanced paper tensile strength by 100% due to their favourable dimensions. This defines the usefulness of fibrillar particles whose cell wall collapsibility increases the web density by increasing bonding ability and thus, strength of pulp-based products. Fines produced from more extreme synergy between alkaline peroxide and degree of refining, exhibit unique submicron fibrils and 'nano-CGF' also responsible for further augmentation of EFB alkaline peroxide pulp network. Whether from the simple (low-AP and low energy refining) or the extreme synergy of AP and refining, the co-generated fines are apparently suitable materials for use as natural filler for augmentation of pulp network. Particularly for the simple AP and refining synergy, the introduced recovery and utilization of the co- generated filler (CGF) was found to reduce 74% turbidity and this improvement will help reduce the complexity of whitewater generation in the pulping system.

The surplus of Oil Palm is the most galore wastes in Malaysia because it produced about half of the world palm oil production, which contributes a major disposal problem Synthesis from an empty fruit bunch produced products such as Carboxymethyl Cellulose (CMC), could apply in diverse application such as for paper coating, food packaging and most recently, the potential as biomaterials has been revealed. In this study, CMC was prepared by firstly dissolved the bleached pulp from OPEFB in mixture solution of dimethyl sulfoxide(DMSO)/tetrabutylammonium fluoride (TBAF) without any prior chemical modification. It took only 30 minutes to fully dissolve at temperature 60°C before sodium hydroxide (NaOH) were added for activation and monochloroacetateas terrifying agent. The final product is appeared in white powder, which is then will be analyzedby FTIR analysis. FTIR results show peaks appeared at wavenumber between 1609 cm-1 to 1614 cm-1 proved the existence of carboxymethyl groups which substitute OH groups at anhydroglucose(AGU) unit. As a conclusion, mixture solution of DMSO/TBAF is the suitable solvent used for dissolved cellulose before modifying it into CMC with higher Degree of Substitution (DS). Furthermore, the dissolution of the OPEFB bleached pulp was easy, simple and at a faster rate without prior chemical modification at temperature as low as 60°C.