DefinePK

Abstract

Oil Palm empty fruit bunches (OPEFB) is the solid waste produced from crude palm oil industries. It comprises of cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin. The major component of hemicelluloses, xylan, is a complex heteropolysaccharide with a ß-1,4-xylose backbone. In the utilization of xylan, it must first be hydrolyzed into its components, that are the 5 carbon atom sugar xylose and arabinose. Endoxylanase (xylanase) is the primary enzyme that attacks the backbone structure of hemicellulose by random cleavage of internal xylosidic linkages to produces the xylose hydrolisate. Further xylose can be used as raw material for the production of a wide variety of chemicals such as xylitol. Enzymatic hydrolysis of xylan to xylose using xylanase offers an environmentally friendly biotechnological process beside performed at ambient temperature and pressure, it also has high specificity and low cost. Previous research has shown that fungal species Trichoderma is a good producer of lignocellulosic enzymes including xylanase. This article describes the study of enzymatic hydrolysis of OPEFB using crude xylanase extract produced by Trichoderma viride ITB CC L67. The study focused on the optimation of hydrolysis process in terms of temperature and pH. The optimization was done based on Response Surface Methodology (RSM) to give either the optimum xylose concentration or xylose to glucose concentration ratio. Further, the kinetics of the enzymatic hydrolysis process of OPEFB was studied. The enzymatic hydrolysis can be well approached by the Michaelis Menten kinetic model, and kinetic parameters were obtained from experimental data.