OPTIMASI WAKTU HIDROLISIS TANDAN KOSONG KELAPA SAWIT MENJADI FURFURAL BERBANTUKAN GELOMBANG MIKRO

As a regional center for the development of oil palm plantations and crude palm oil (CPO) industry, East Kalimantan has the potential to produce oil palm empty fruit bunches (EFB) in large enough quantities. EFB is the solid waste from the palm oil industry which uses palm fruit bunches (FFB) as a raw material. EFB part is 23% of FFB. Whereas EFB has a high economic value if processed further. One of the method that is used to hydrolyze the content of pentosan in EFB into furfural. The purpose of this research is to develop one step hydrolysis technique of EFB into furfural with microwaves assistance to obtain the optimum time which can produce maximum furfural. In this research 10 grams of EFB was added with 250 mL of H2SO4 15% as the catalyst. The mixture was then hydrolyzed using microwave-assisted with a time variety of for 15, 30, 45, 60, 75, 90, and105 minutes. The results of analysis by Gas Chromatography (GC) showed that the highest results of furfural was at 75 minutes with a concentration of 1.34 mg / mL.