Comparison of Two Analytical Methods for Compositional Analysis of Lignocellulosic Biomass for Bioethanol Production

Empty fruit bunch (EFB) of oil palm is one of potential lignocellulosic biomass for bioethanol production. An accurate biomass compositional analysis is needed to evaluate the conversion yields and process economics due to changes in feedstock or process design. The chemical components of EFB of oil palm that will be used as biomass in bioethanol production was determined by using two analytical procedures in two laboratories. Two-stage sulfuric acid hydrolysis is the most common procedure to fractionate biomass both for gravimetric and instrumental analysis. Both methods employed two stages sulfuric acid hydrolysis to determine the lignin content. The differences between the procedure are the solvents used in the determination of extractive compounds, length of time required to hydrolize the biomass and the procedure for measuring the cellulose content that in one method employs HPLC-RI while the other using gravimetric method. The purpose of this inter-laboratory comparison was to get the reliable data of chemical components composition of raw EFB. There are no significant differences of composition values for two major chemical components (lignin and cellulose) of EFB sample resulted from both methods while for hemicellulose content is significant different. International Journal of Environment and Bioenergy, Vol. 3, No. 2. Hal. 88-97 ISSN 2165-8951