Carboxymethyl Cellulose (CMC) from Oil Palm Empty Fruit Bunch (OPEFB) in the new solvent Dimethyl Sulfoxide (DMSO)/Tetrabutylammonium Fluoride (TBAF)

The surplus of Oil Palm is the most galore wastes in Malaysia because it produced about half of the world palm oil production, which contributes a major disposal problem. Synthesis from an empty fruit bunch produced products such as Carboxymethyl Cellulose (CMC), could apply in diverse application such as for paper coating, food packaging and most recently, the potential as biomaterials has been revealed. In this study, CMC was prepared by firstly dissolved the bleached pulp from OPEFB in mixture solution of dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO)/tetrabutylammonium fluoride (TBAF) without any prior chemical modification. It took only 30 minutes to fully dissolve at temperature 60 degrees C before sodium hydroxide (NaOH) were added for activation and monochloroacetate as terrifying agent. The final product is appeared in white powder, which is then will be analyzed by FTIR analysis. FTIR results show peaks appeared at wavenumber between 1609 cm(-1) to 1614 cm(-1) proved the existence of carboxymethyl groups which substitute OH groups at anhydroglucose (AGU) unit. As a conclusion, mixture solution of DMSO/TBAF is the suitable solvent used for dissolved cellulose before modifying it into CMC with higher Degree of Substitution (DS). Furthermore, the dissolution of the OPEFB bleached pulp was easy, simple and at a faster rate without prior chemical modification at temperature as low as 60 degrees C.