Indonesia Conference Directory

Indonesia as one of the largest producer of oil palm in the world generates tremendous solid wastes such as oil palm empty fruit bunch (EFB), oil palm frond, and oil palm trunk. These wastes are lignocellulose biomass which is composed mainly of cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin content. Lignocellulose could be a good candidate for biorefinery application. Lactic acid is an important biorefinery product used in food, cosmetic, pharmaceutical, chemical industries, and others. One of the most increasing applications of lactic acid is its usage in the polymerization of lactic acid to poly-lactic acid (PLA). Generally, lactic acid was produced from petrochemical resources through chemical synthesis and still less research on the utilization of carbon sources from lignocellulose as feedstock for lactic acid production. Therefore, this work explores the production of lactic acid from EFB through separate hydrolysis and fermentation (SHF) method using cellulolytic enzymes and Lactobacillus delbrueckii as lactic acid bacteria. EFB treated with alkali explosion was used for this study. Hydrolysis process was carried out at 50oC, pH 4.8 and 150 rpm of agitation for 72 h using Ctec2 and Htec2 enzymes. Subsequently, hydrolyzate was fermented by Lactobacillus delbrueckii to produce lactic acid. Variation of pH (5.5, 6.0, 6.5, 7.0) and temperature (45, 50, 55, 60oC) on fermentation was conducted in this study in order to optimize the production of lactic acid.