Production of Industrial Sugars from Petai Belalang

Rubena Malfia, Kamaldin and Dayang Salwani, Awang Adeni and Kopli, Bujang (2024) Production of Industrial Sugars from Petai Belalang. Multidisciplinary Journal of Sustainability, 3 (2). pp. 47-54. ISSN 2976-3614

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Abstract

Leucaena leucocephala or locally known in Malaysia as ‘petai belalang’ was studied as an alternative material to produce sugar from cellulose. Analyses of the dried samples contain about 25% lignin, 50% cellulose and 17% hemicellulose. This dried sample was pulverised, mixed with water (10% w/v) and pre-treated by autoclaving. The resulting liquid and solid fractions were enzymatically hydrolysed and analysed for sugars, with a yield of 30% and 17%, respectively. Further analyses revealed that the sugars consisted mostly of glucose at 30% from the liquid and 40% from the solid fractions, clearly exhibiting higher content of glucose in the solid fraction. Accordingly, 1kg of fresh petai belalang biomass (84% dry matter) produces 395g of raw sugar, almost 50% of the total fresh weight. In a circular economy, this exhibits the potential of using waste biomass from petai belalang that can be utilised to produce raw sugar. Other sugars were traces of arabinose at 2% and cellulobiose at 1%. Purification of this raw sugar by filtration on PAC removed about 80% of the sugar, with a remaining amount of 87g (22%) purified glucose, at 55g and 32g from the liquid and solid portions.

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