Sustainable extration of cellulose pulp from agribusiness waste : poor performance is bad result?

Abstract

Sustainable production is a recurrent theme in industrial engineering. Commercial production of canned palm hearts generates an amount of waste from the leaf sheaths that envelop the heart of palm, which can be used to produce cellulose pulp then reducing environmental impacts. This study aims to examine the feasibility of cellulose pulping from King Palm leaf sheaths to obtain a fiber with absorbent capacity and low residual lignin content, as well as demonstrate the influence of the controllable process factors on the response variables analyzed through the formulation of n-dimensional equations and surfaces which permitted the optimization of the variables of interest. The response variables were selected in order to characterize the fiber obtained according to degree of delignification, absorption capability and speed and apparent density.The results indicated that the pulps obtained from the processes proposed although didn’t meet the quality standards required for absorbent pulps, since values are lower than those established in the research hypotheses, is very promising. This attempt raises the discussion around the role that industrial engineering professionals and researchers may play in the agribusiness waste recovery and recycling. Moreover it provides useful information for re-planning of experiments in search for extraction optimization of this or similar agribusiness wastes.