Acosta Fernandez R., Viviescas P., Sandoval M., Nabarlatz D., 2018, Autohydrolysis of Sugarcane Bagasse and Empty Fruit Bunch from Oil Palm: Kinetics Model and Analysis of Xylo- Oligosaccharides Yield, Chemical Engineering Transactions, 65, 307-312.
Colombia is an agricultural country generating huge amounts of lignocellulosic material as by-product. Between them, sugarcane and oil palm agroindustries are the most representative productive chains in the country, producing sugarcane bagasse and empty fruit bunch from oil palm as the main byproducts. Considering its chemical composition, they could be considered as a promising source of non-digestible oligosaccharides having prebiotics characteristics as Xylo-oligosaccharides. In this work, Xylo- oligosaccharides production was studied by autohydrolysis reaction in micro-reactors (50 mL). After the reaction, Xylo-oligosaccharides yield in autohydrolysis liquor represents around 19 wt.% (160 °C, 90 min) and28 wt.% (180 °C, 45 min) of the initial xylan in sugarcane bagasse and empty fruit bunch from oil palm, respectively. A kinetic model for the autohydrolysis reaction was developed to describe the behaviour of the different reaction product yields as function of temperature and reaction time. Coefficients of determination(R2) of this model were greater than 0.97 providing a satisfactory interpretation of the reaction kinetics.
