Pulping and bleaching of Malaysian oil palm empty fruit bunches

Oil palm empty fruit bunch (EFB) was evaluated as a raw material for papermaking pulp production. The EFB was chopped, screened, and washed before cooking. Preliminary bench-scale trials were carried out using soda and soda-anthraquinone cooking followed by bleaching using elemental chlorine free and totally chlorine free sequences. Pilot-scale soda cooking was carried out in a 2300 L spherical digester using the soda process followed by a three-stage elemental chlorine free bleaching sequence. Unbleached and bleached EFB pulps were tested for physical and optical properties. Comparisons were made between the properties of the EFB pulps and bleached kraft eucalyptus pulp. The EFB unbleached and bleached pulps were acceptable for papermaking.