Simultaneous pretreatment and saccharification of oil palm empty fruit bunch using laccase-cellulase cocktail

Abstract Oil palm empty fruit bunch (OPEFB) can be categorized as one of the toughest lignocellulosic biomass materials to be degraded naturally due to its complexity in structure. A new biological pretreatment approach of utilizing laccase-cellulase cocktail to simultaneously pretreat and saccharify OPEFB for reducing sugars production was presented in this study. Combination of laccase and cellulase has shown to exhibit minimum inhibition at 5% and 8%, respectively. This simultaneous pretreatment and saccharification of OPEFB using laccase-cellulase cocktail comprised of laccase (25–105 U/g) and Acremonium cellulase (10–30 FPU/g) was carried out at 50 °C for 72 h. As a result, the laccase-cellulase cocktail at a ratio of 45 U/g:25 FPU/g successfully produced 10.90 g/L of reducing sugars and 32.62% of hydrolysis yield, without the need of substrate washing step after pretreatment, in which shortens the time from a total of 144 h–72 h and reduces the utilization of extra vessels.