Mixed pyrolysis of rice straw waste and oil palm empty fruit bunch to produce furfural compounds

High availability of biomass waste that is unutilized can become valuable furfural through pyrolysis. Rice straw and oil palm empty fruit bunch have huge potential due to their amount and composition, in which both biomasses contain more than 50% of cellulose and hemicellulose. This work aims to investigate the effects of pyrolyzing biomasses mixture to produce furfural, therefore creating a more flexible process of waste treatment using pyrolysis without waste segregation. This research's objective is to analyze the furfural produced by pyrolysis with an inert gas flow rate between 85-90 mL/minute, a variation of biomasses mass ratio up to a total of 2.5 gram, and also a variation of operating temperature from 450-550°C. The results show that co-pyrolysis of biomass mixture does not affect the conversion, furfural mass, and activation energy significantly (<15%), compared to individual biomass pyrolysis. Furthermore, the research shows that pyrolysis does not undergo significant mass reduction after 35 minutes. The optimum temperature for the production of furfural is 500°C.