Physical refining of crude palm oil includes three major stages: degumming, bleaching and deodourisation. Bleaching earth is used for the removal of undesirable components such as phospholipids, colorants and traces of heavy metals contained in crude oil (Sabah et al., 2007). Regeneration of spent bleaching earth can be achieved by heat treatment (Mahramanlioglu et al., […]

Oil palm empty fruit bunches (EFB) contain about 70%-80% holocellulose, which comprises about 40%-45% and 30%-35% of cellulose and hemicellulose, respectively, as well as 18%-22% lignin (Basiron and Husin, 1996). These lignocellulosics can be utilised for the production of fibrereinforced biocomposites (Mariko et al., 2016) and fine chemicals such as glucose and xylose (Siew et […]