2.1. OPEFB pretreatment and enzymatic hydrolysis
OPEFB were obtained from a palm oil refinery plant in Malaysia.
The pretreatment of OPEFB was conducted according the previous
report with modifications (Wang et al., 2012). OPEFB fibres were
milled to the final size of 0.5–1.0 cm, treated with 10 g/L NaOH
at 121 C for 60 min, and washed using tap water to pH 10. The
alkaline pretreated OPEFB was then immersed in 3% (v/v) hydrogen
peroxide at 50 C for 24 h, washed to below pH 9 and stored at 4 C
until use.
T