• Journal of Korea Technical Association of The Pulp and Paper Industry
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• v.45 no.1
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• pp.42-51
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• 2013

In this study, oil palm biomass such as empty fruit bunch (EFB) and palm kernel shell (PKS) was used as raw materials for making pellets. Hardwood sawdusts were also mixed with EFB and PKS for making pellets. For improving a bad forming behavior in a pelletizer, 1 to 3 per cent of corn starch based on oven-dried weight biomass was added. The starch contributed to the decrease of dust generation in addition to the improvement of forming capability during pellet forming. Heating values of every pellets made of EFB and PKS were higher than 4,300 kcal/kg for the first grade pellet, irrespective of addition of sawdusts. However, the pellets made of EFB and PKS had ash contents over 3 per cent, which made it impossible to be applied for home use. Instead, they could be applied for industrial use. For studying their combustion characteristics, the pellets from the mixtures of EFB, PKS and sawdusts were analyzed using thermal gravimetric analyzer (TGA). From the TGA results, thermal decomposition of EFB and PKS occurred following three including endothermic reaction and dehydration, devolatilization of the major chemical components, and finally combustion of residual lignin and char.

• Journal of the Korean Wood Science and Technology
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• v.44 no.3
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• pp.350-359
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• 2016

We performed fast pyrolysis of empty fruit bunch (EFB) in the range of temperature from $400{\sim}550^{\circ}C$ and 1.3 s of residence time. The effect of temperature on the yields and physicochemical properties of pyrolytic products were also studied. Elemental and component analysis of EFB showed that the large amount of potassium (ca. 8400 ppm) presents in the feedstock. Thermogravimetric analysis suggested that the potassium in the feedstock catalyzed degradation of cellulose. The yield of bio-oil increased with increasing temperature in the range of temperature from $400{\sim}500^{\circ}C$, while that of gas and biochar decreased and showed monotonous change each with increasing temperature. When the EFB was pyrolyzed at $550^{\circ}C$, the yield of bio-oil and char decreased while that of gas increased. Water content of the bio-oils obtained at different temperatures was 20~30% and their total acid number were less than 100 mg KOH/g oil. Viscosity of the bio-oils was 11 cSt (centistoke), and heating value varied from 15 to 17 MJ/kg. Using GC/MS analysis, 27 chemical compounds which were classified into two groups (cellulose-derived and lignin-derived) were identified. Remarkably the concentration of phenol was approximately 25% based on entire chemical compounds.

• Journal of Korea Technical Association of The Pulp and Paper Industry
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• v.47 no.4
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• pp.13-20
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• 2015

Soda-AQ pulp made from sugarcane bagasse (SCB) and oil palm trunk (OPT) were bleached in element chlorine free (ECF) sequence. Bleached SCB and OPT pulp was achieve higher brightness than 85.0% ISO. Viscosity of SCB bleached pulp and OPT bleached pulp were achieved 18-27 cPs and 18-26 cPs. In 7.8% active chlorine dioxide addition, bleached SCB pulp was shown 88.7% ISO brightness and 20.4 cPs viscosity. And bleached OPT pulp was shown 88.5% ISO brightness and 18.8 cPs viscosity with 7.8% active chlorine dioxide addition.

• Journal of Korea Technical Association of The Pulp and Paper Industry
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• v.48 no.2
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• pp.91-98
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• 2016

Cellulose nanofibrils (CNF) was made from oil palm trunk (OPT) with soda-anthraquinone pulping, chlorine dioxide bleaching, carboxymethylation, followed by mechanical grinding. Size of this CNF was 16-40 nm of width confirmed by TEM. To evaluate CNF from OPT as cosmetics raw materials for moisturizing component, water holding properties was compared with hyaluronic acid and collagen. CNF from OPT had better water holding property than collagen or hyaluronic acid whether phenoxyethanol was added as antiseptic or without additive.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.9 no.6
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• pp.1548-1554
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• 2008

The market of silver precious metal clay (PMC) is promising as its application for agile metal craft. The property of suitable hardness and shrinkage as well as environment-safe is strictly required as people make the final product with bare hands. We propose a silver PMC with new organic binder made of palm oil, glycolic acid and water. Then we prepared disk specimen of our proposed PMC and well-known commercial PMC. We investigated the hardness, weight change, linear shrinkage, density and micro structure evolution with sintering temperature of $700{\sim}900^{\circ}C$ ($50^{\circ}C$ gap) for 15minutes. We confirm our proposed PMC has suitable property for craft product comparable for commercial PMC, and the optimum sintering condition is $850^{\circ}C$-15minutes for metal craft application.

• Journal of Korea Technical Association of The Pulp and Paper Industry
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• v.46 no.1
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• pp.18-28
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• 2014

Renewable Portfolio Standards(RPS) is a regulation that requires a renewable energy generated from eco-friendly energy sources such as biomass, wind, solar, and geothermal. The RPS mechanism generally is an obligatory policy that places on electricity supply companies to produce a designated fraction of their electricity from renewable energies. The domestic companies to supply electricity largely rely on wood pellets in order to implement the RPS in spite of undesirable situation of lack of wood resources in Korea. This means that the electricity supply companies in Korea must explore new biomass as an alternative to wood. Palm kernel shell (PKS) and empty fruit bunch (EFB) as oil palm wastes can be used as raw materials used for making pellets after their thermochemical treatment like torrefaction. Torrefaction is a pretreatment process which serves to improve the properties including heating value and energy densification of these oil palm wastes through a mild pyrolysis at temperature typically ranging between 200 and $300^{\circ}C$ in the absence of oxygen under atmospheric pressure. Torrefaction of oil palms wastes at above $200^{\circ}C$ contributed to the increase of fixed carbon with the decrease of volatile matters, leading to the improvement of their calorific values over 20.9 MJ/kg (=5,000 kcal/kg) up to 25.1 MJ/kg (=6,000 kcal/kg). In particular, EFB sensitively responded to torrefaction because of its physical properties like fiber bundles, compared to PKS and hardwood chips. In conclusion, torrefaction treatment of PKS and EFB can greatly contribute to the implement of RPS of the electricity supply companies in Korea through the increased co-firing biomass with coal.

• Journal of Korea Technical Association of The Pulp and Paper Industry
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• v.47 no.1
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• pp.24-34
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• 2015

Domestic companies supplying electricity must increase obligatory duty to use renewable energy annually. If not met with obligatory allotment, the electricity-supply companies must pay RPS (Renewable Portfolio Standards) penalty. Although the power plants using a pulverizing coal firing boiler could co-fire up to around 3 per cent with wood pellets mixed in with coal feedstock without any major equipment revamps, they recorded only about 60 per cent fulfillment of RPS. Consequently, USD 46 million of RPS penalty was imposed on the six power supplying subsidiaries of GENCOs in 2014. One of the solutions to reduce the RPS penalty is that the power supply companies adopt the co-firing of torrefied lignocellulosic biomass in coal plants, which may contribute to the use of over 30 per cent of torrefied biomass mixed with bituminous coals. Extra binder was required to form pellets using torrefied biomass such as wood chips, PKS (Palm Kernel Shell) and EFB (Empty Fruit Bunch). Instead of corn starch, 30, 50 and 70 per cent of Larix saw dusts were respectively added to the torrefied feedstocks such as Pinus densiflora chips, PKS and EFB. The addition of saw dusts led to the decrease of the calorific values of the pellets but the forming ability of the pelletizer was exceedingly improved. Another advantage from the addition of saw dusts stemmed from the reduction of ash contents of the pellets. Finally, it was confirmed that torrefied oil palm biomass such as PKS and EFB could be valuable feedstocks in making pellets through improved binding ability.

• Journal of Korea Technical Association of The Pulp and Paper Industry
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• v.44 no.6
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• pp.36-42
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• 2012

The empty fruit bunch fibers(EFB) of oil palm were examined for optimal utilization of the EFB fibers. The EFB fibers were obtained by shredding EFB, followe by removal of fines. The surface properties of the fibers were modified with various pre-treatments, such as hot water extraction, the soaking treatments with NaOH, $ClO_2$ and n-hexane. The changes in the fiber surface were examined with FT-IR method, which showed the changes in chemical compositions such as pectin, lignin, and etc. according to the pre-treatment methods. And the z-directional tensile testing of the fiber mold made of the treated EFB fibers showed the changes in the bonding strength by the pre-treatments. The fiber mold made of EFB fibers treated with $ClO_2$ showed the greater increase in the tensile energy absorption although the NaOH treatment resulted in the severer impact on the EFB fibers.

• Journal of Korea Technical Association of The Pulp and Paper Industry
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• v.46 no.1
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• pp.56-64
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• 2014

The applicability of oil palm EFB(Empty Fiber Bunch) to the papermaking process as a functional organic filler was investigated in this study. Since the EFB has similar chemical composition to the lignocellulose materials such as wood fiber, the fines of EFB was applied to the handsheet paper as an alternative to wood powder which were used as an organic filler to improve water removal efficiency and bulk. The experiments showed that the EFB fines resulted in the higher water removal efficiency at the wet pressing process and leaded to the higher bulk than those of wood powder. In case of 10 % addition of organic filler, the strength properties were not significantly changed. Those results suggested that the EFB could be used as a new organic filler for improving water removal efficiency and bulk property.

• Journal of Korea Technical Association of The Pulp and Paper Industry
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• v.48 no.2
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• pp.46-55
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• 2016

The microcrystalline cellulose (MCC) was prepared from oil palm biomass, empty fruit bunch (EFB) for increasing the usability of EFB. The morphological, physical and chemical properties of MCC made from EFB were evaluated by comparing with those of the commercial MCC obtained from AVICEL. The EFB-MCC had the wider distribution in particle size and there were many small particles around $10{\mu}m$. There were no significant differences in the cellulose crytallinity and the chemical composition between EFB-MCC and AVICEL-MCC. The properties of tablet samples made by the common direct compression process were evaluated depending on the types of MCC and the compression pressure during tablet making process. The tablet made of EFB MCC showed the higher compressed structure, which resulted in the less disintegration by the water soaking treatment than those made of Avicel-MCC. The results of this study showed that the EFB-MCC could be utilized as one of the commercial MCC.