Factorial analysis of biobutanol production from oil palm frond juice

• Main Author: Srimathan, Rajah Muniandy
• Format: Undergraduates Project Papers
• Language: English; English; English; English
• Published: 2017
• Subjects: TP Chemical technology
• Online Access: http://umpir.ump.edu.my/id/eprint/23021/1/Factorial%20analysis%20of%20biobutanol%20production%20from%20oil%20palm%20frond%20juice%20-%20Table%20of%20contents.pdf; http://umpir.ump.edu.my/id/eprint/23021/2/Factorial%20analysis%20of%20biobutanol%20production%20from%20oil%20palm%20frond%20juice%20-%20Abstract.pdf; http://umpir.ump.edu.my/id/eprint/23021/3/Factorial%20analysis%20of%20biobutanol%20production%20from%20oil%20palm%20frond%20juice%20-%20Chapter%201.pdf; http://umpir.ump.edu.my/id/eprint/23021/4/Factorial%20analysis%20of%20biobutanol%20production%20from%20oil%20palm%20frond%20juice%20-%20References.pdf; http://umpir.ump.edu.my/id/eprint/23021/

Oil palm frond (OPF) is available during harvesting of the fresh fruit branches of palm trees and the juice can be produced by using sugarcane press machine. Lignocellulosic biomass serves the most appropriate feedstock for fermentation derived biofuels such as butanol, owing to its environmental abundance, the high quantity of sugar composition and a low price. The OPF juice contains higher glucose content, which is about 70% of the total free sugar. Therefore, OPF juice has high potential as a carbon source to produce biofuel such as bioethanol and biobutanol. In this study, several factors that potentially affecting biobutanol production from OPF juice by using Clostridium acetobutylicum will be investigated and analysed using a two level half factorial design which have been developed by the Design Expert Software Version 7.1. Five different parameters will be investigated in this study were as follows; temperature (30 °C to 40 °C), initial medium pH (4 to 7), different inoculum size (5% to 20%), yeast extract concentration (2 g/L to 15 g/L) and rotation rate (50 rpm to 150 rpm). Biobutanol and residual sugars concentration will be determined using gas chromatography (GC) and high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), respectively at the end of the fermentation period. The main effects and interaction effects of each parameter on biobutanol yield (g biobutanol/g sugars consumed) will be analysed using Design Expert Software. Based on the factorial analysis, it was observed that the most significant parameter was temperature, which contributes 21.66%, followed by yeast extract concentration and medium pH, which were contribute 14.77% and 6.89%, respectively. The analysis showed the R2 value for the model was 0.9841 and the most influencing interaction was between temperature and medium pH with contribution up to 21.12%. From the validation experiments, the experimental values were reasonable close to the predicted values with only 6.3% error. In conclusion, main factors such as temperature, medium pH and yeast extract concentration were identified as active factors on biobutanol production. Among the determining factors, the main factor of temperature and the interaction of temperature and pH were determined to be the most effective in influencing the production of biobutanol from OPF juice by C. acetobutylicum.