Methods of Extracting Cellulosic Material from Olive Pulp

Jefft is an important solid waste generated in large quantities every year from olive oil extraction process.Jefft is considered a lignocellulosic material, so it consists of components similar to that of wood such as cellulose, lignin, and hemicellulose. Jefft is produced from  natural product, so it is considered a renewable source of cellulose. In this study about 30% of pure cellulose was extracted from Jefft.The separation of cellulose from Jefft was performed in four stage : extraction, pre-hydrolysis, pulping, and bleaching. Our study showed that two steps of pulping and bleaching could be as good as the four steps one.In the extraction step, the extractable materials such as residual olive oil were removed.In the second step the Jefft was subjected to treatment with diluted solution of sulfuric acid (5%) or sodium hydroxide (5%) under a pressure of about 5 psi. This step was useful in opening the Jefft structure and make it more accessible to pulping and bleaching chemicals.Then Jefft was subjected to pulping by either acid or Kraft pulping process.Results indicate that Kraft pulping is considered to be more suitable to used in this study, since with the Kraft process higher yield of cellulose was obtained, in addition chemicals used in this study was recyclable.Recycling of chemicals is a very important factor in this study, since we are planning in scaling up the process to a multi-ton process.In the Kraft process, Jefft was treated with a solution of sodium hydroxide and sodium sulfide under a pressure (5 psi).Resulting cellulose was then subjected to treatment with various oxidizing agents in a process called bleaching process. Various sequences of oxidizing agents each consisting of at least four oxidizing agents were studied. The best results were achieved when using the sequence of CEHP which consists of the four oxidizing agents: chlorine, sodium hydroxide, hypochlorite, and hydrogen peroxide. Cellulose produced, using this sequence, showed the lowest contents of lignin as was determined by Kappa No. procedure. Viscosity was determined to cellulose produced from CEHP bleaching sequence, from the viscosity, the DP was determined to be about 315. These results indicate that, cellulose extracted from Jefft has a structure that could be similar to that of microcrystalline cellulose (MCC).Results summarized in this thesis indicate that we have succeeded in converting waste solid Jefft into valued added product MCC.MCC is a valuable natural polymer that is very useful in unlimited numbers of commercial applications such as food, medicine, construction, absorbents, and many others.