Abundant waste agricultural residues such as oil palm empty fruit bunch (EFB) can provide alternative sources of biomass for producing furfural. The aims of this study were to propose a method of preparing furfural and dissolving pulp (DP) from EFB using prehydrolysis with nitric acid, and to examine how the prehydrolysate, which contains xylan, can be used for furfural production. The furfural yield in the nitric acid prehydrolysate was increased to 6.2% of the EFB material weight by

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... n with an acid catalyst. Nitric acid prehydrolysis followed by soda cooking under atmospheric pressure was also applied to the preparation of DP. The obtained pulp was then bleached by using peroxymonosulfuric acid (P sa ) , chlorine dioxide (D 0 , D 1 ) , and hydrogen peroxide (E p ) in the elementary chlorine-free P sa -D 0 -E p -D 1 sequence. The pulp demon-*1 〒305-8572 茨城県つくば市天王台 1-1-1/1-1-1 Tennodai,