Pretreament of water-soaked oil palm frond by electron beam irradiation and ionic liquid

Pretreatment of lignocellulosic biomass is needed in order to treat the raw material more effectively. Pretreatment method is classified into 4 groups; physicochemical, chemical, biological and physical method. In this research project, the physicochemical and chemical method were chosen. For the physicochemical method, electron beam irradiation was conducted while for the chemical method, ionic liquid pretreatment will be used. Previously, the dissolution of lignocellulosic biomass only by using ionic liquid was investigated. By combining the ionic liquid and the electron beam irradiation, the performance of both methods were observed. The main objective of this project is to investigate the composition of lignin, cellulose and hemicellulose in the water-soaked lignocellulosic biomass by using ionic liquid with and without the electron beam irradiation. For the determination of lignin, the method used was by the calibration of Kappa number method and Klason method. For the cellulose and hemicellulose, Tappi method T-203 was used.