Development of integrated oil palm empty fruit bunches (EFB)-based dissolving pulp and furfural production: a consequential LCA approach

Purpose
Dissolving pulp production is mostly reliant on wood, which drastically depletes forest resources. To prevent the over-exploitation, the efforts were required by considering waste materials utilization. Therefore, a comprehensive assessment to account for environmental impacts was needed. The purpose of this research was to determine the environmental impact of empty fruit bunches (EFB) utilization from oil palms as a promising raw material substitute for wood in the production of dissolving pulp and furfural as co-product.
Methods
The consequential life cycle assessment (cLCA) was performed by following the methodology in ISO 14040. Inventory for the input–output materials and energies for the proposed integrated dissolving pulp and furfural co-production process was evaluated based on laboratory-scale experiments. Meanwhile, the field survey as a reference for the existing practice in the conventional dissolving pulp industry was conducted. The SimaPro v8.0.5® software was used for the LCA calculation with the Centrum voor Milieuwetenschappen Leiden (CML) environmental impact assessment method. Several environmental impact categories, such as acidification, global warming, eutrophication, and human toxicity potential, were quantified.
Results and discussion
This study examined three proposed scenarios for dissolving pulp and furfural co-production compared with the conventional dissolving pulp production. In the Scenario 1, 50% of the wood consumption was replaced by EFB and applied to acid prehydrolysis/soda cooking followed by ECF bleaching, with an additional process to co-produce furfural. In the Scenario 2, 100% of wood consumption was replaced by EFB, with the same cooking and bleaching parameters as those in Scenario 1. In the Scenario 3, 100% of wood consumption was replaced by EFB, and the acid was replaced by water in the prehydrolysis process to improve the total environmental performance with the same conditions as the previous scenarios. The Scenario 3 was the most promising scenario and had the lowest environmental impact.
Conclusions
This research was conducted to propose EFB, which is environmentally sustainable and economically profitable, as a wood substitute in the co-production of dissolving pulp and furfural. The scenarios were proposed and compared with the existing practices. Based on the cLCA approach, this study recommended the EFB as a promising raw material and referred to Scenario 3 for the environmentally friendly system production.