Optimization and Scale up of Cellulose Extraction Process From Olive Industry Solid Waste

Olive Industry Solid Waste is the remaining part of the grain of the olive industry after squeezing it, it consists of wood seeds and pulp. The OISW consists of cellulose, hemicelluloses, lignin and extractives. In this work, cellulose the most valuable ingredient of OISW, was extracted in a multistep process. The process begins with pre-hydrolysis stage which opens the OISW structure and makes it more accessible for chemicals. Also in this stage, most of the hemicelluloses materials present in OISW are degraded and dissolve in water. In the prehydrolysis stage, different materials were evaluated and satisfactory results were obtained using water alone. Then OISW was subjected to the pulping process using an aqueous solution of sodium sulfide and sodium hydroxide. In the pulping stage most of the lignin is degraded and removed. The produced pulp was then subjected to a bleaching process to remove residual colored materials. Excellent results were obtained using the bleaching sequence HtPHtEp . The amount obtained form OISW was about 30%. The process was then scaled up to 5 kilograms of OISW using a 20 kilograms reactor. The amount of cellulose obtained was 1.2 kg (24%).The obtained cellulose was evaluated using various analytical and spectroscopic techniques: K-number, Intrinsic Viscosity, Soxhlet Extraction, SEM and FT-IR. The extracted cellulose, was successfully converted into carboxylmethyl cellulose (CMC) by reacting it with sodium hydroxide and chloroacetic acid. CMC is an important cellulose ether, which have wide industrial application particularly in cosmetics, food, detergents, paints and other consumer products. The derivative was analyzed by FT-IR and the degree of substitution was determined. The most important results of this work are: 1- The process of extracting cellulose from the OISW was scaled up to multikilograms. 2- The extracted cellulose was successfully converted into cellulose ether )CM