Pretreatment of oil palm fronds for enhancing xylose production

The purpose of lignocellulosic biomass pretreatment is to extract the reducing sugars contained in the biomass, which are building blocks for biofuels and many types of platform chemicals. In this research project, different integrated pretreatment systems consisting of inorganic salts with/without the assistance of oxidizing agents or deep eutectic solvents are evaluated and compared in terms of their performance to extract a hemicellulosic sugar, namely xylose, from oil palm fronds. Subsequently, the xylose-rich pretreatment hydrolysate is further subjected to a fermentation process to produce xylitol, a pentose sugar alcohol widely used in pharmaceutical, medical, and food industries.