POTENTIAL OF OIL PALM FRONDS (OPF) AS CULTIVATION MEDIA FOR YEAST GROWTH

摘要

Oil palm frond is one of lignocellulose source and it contributes up to 70% of waste in oil palm industry in Malaysia. It has good potential as cultivation media for yeast growth because it contains 45% of cellulose and 26% of hemicelluloses as carbon source. There are three main processes involved in the production of microbial cultivation media from lignocellulose material; extraction of cellulose from lignocellulose, hydrolysis of cellulose to produce reducing sugar, and incorporation of reducing sugar in media composition for yeasts growth. The main challenges in this project are to produce maximum yield of reducing sugar and to obtain a media that is suitable for optimum yeasts growth. It is observed that enzymatic hydrolysis can produce higher yield of reducing sugar after proper pre-treatment on substrate compared to acid hydrolysis. To enhance the hydrolysis of cellulose, pre-treatment of lignocellulose material will be done to remove lignin and also to enhance the enzyme accessibility to the lignocellulose. A combination of several enzymes and optimum reaction condition will be studied. The hydrolysate will be used as cultivation media for S.cerevisiae ITM 3010 and Candida utilis ITM 1017 solely or with additional nutrient.