Comparison of microcrystalline characterization results from oil palm midrib alpha cellulose using different delignization method

Oil palm midrib is one of the waste generated by palm plants containing 34.89% cellulose. Cellulose has the potential to produce microcrystalline cellulose can be used as an excipient in tablet formulations by direct compression. Microcrystalline cellulose is the result of a controlled hydrolysis of alpha cellulose, so the alpha cellulose extraction process of oil palm midrib greatly affect the quality of the resulting microcrystalline cellulose. The purpose of this study was to compare the microcrystalline cellulose produced from alpha cellulose extracted from oil palm midrib by two different methods. Fisrt delignization method uses sodium hydroxide. Second method uses a mixture of nitric acid and sodium nitrite, and continued with sodium hydroxide and sodium sulfite. Microcrystalline cellulose obtained by both method was characterized separately, including organoleptic test, color reagents test, dissolution test, pH test and determination of functional groups by FTIR. The results was compared with microcrystalline cellulose which has been available on the market. The characterization results showed that microcrystalline cellulose obtained by first method has the most similar characteristics to the microcrystalline cellulose available in the market.