CHAPTER II

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

This study will investigate the wood vinegar that comes from banana waste peelings and

durian husk wastes. The published literatures and studies that are of importance in this study are

highlighted on this chapter.

2.1 Wood Vinegar

Pyroligneous acid, also called wood vinegar is a liquid generated from the gas and

combustion of fresh wood burning in airless condition. When the gas is cooled, it condenses into

liquid. Raw wood vinegar has more than 200 chemicals, such as acetic acid, formaldehyde,

ethyl-valerate, methanol, tar, etc (Food and Fertilizer Technology Center, 2005). Wood vinegar

is a dark liquid produced by the destructive distillation of wood. Its principal components are

acetic acid and methanol. It was once used as a commercial source for acetic acid (Kurlansky,

2002). Wood vinegar is widely used for pest repellent, bud opening for flowering plants, and soil

improvement (Wessapan et al, 2009).

In the common practice of charcoal burning using internal heating of the charged wood

by burning a part of it, all the by-product vapors and gas escapes into the atmosphere as smoke.

The by-products can be recovered by passing the offgases through a series of water cooled

condensers to yield pyroligneous acid. The non-condensable wood gas passes on through the

condensers and may be burned to provide heat. The wood gas is only useable as fuel and consists

typically of 17% methane; 2% hydrogen; 23% carbon monoxide; 38% carbon dioxide; 2%

oxygen and 18% nitrogen. It has a gross calorific value of about 10.8 MJoules per m3 (290
BTU/cu.ft.) i.e. about one third the value of natural gas (Mechanical Wood ProductsBranch,

1985).

Figure 2.1 Instruments used in producing wood vinegar

The pyrolysis oven is designed to contain 60-80 kg of pyrolyzing wood chips, provides tight

airflow. The oven uses charcoal residual as fuel. The required temperature to heat the wood chips

is about 270-450C to give the good quality of wood vinegar, under limited amount of air

(oxygen). The off-gases known as the pyrolysis gases that are a mixture of volatile organic

compounds pass through an air cooled condenser to be condensed into pyroligneous acid. The

non-condensable wood gases which are a by-product are recovered by passing through the

burning chamber to be burned to provide heat. The oven consists of three main components;

burning chamber and pyrolyzing chamber, and air cooled condensing unit. The oven with 98 cm
diameter, 85 cm tall and 10 cm thickness, is designed by having a pyrolyzing chamber inside in

order to obtain the heat evenly distributed throughout the oven. The oven is covered with a lid.

The oven is made of refractory brick living, rendered by refractory concrete. The chamber is

made from sheet metal. The hollow space between the inner oven wall and the chamber wall is

used for containing fuel, and the hollow space of the chamber, 54 cm diameter and 85 cm tall,

with a lid, is used for containing the pyrolyzing wood chips. The pyrolyzing chambers capacity

is 0.2 m3 for pyrolyzing wood chips. One chimney with a 10 cm diameter, attached to the

chamber for more smooth ventilation. The air cooled condensing system is used in the extraction

process, allows for raw wood vinegar collection. The oven is designed for a concept; by the

thermal decomposition of organic substances (pyrolysis) harmful gases will pass on through the

condenser, the non-condensable wood gas may be burned to provide heat. These gases then pass

to a burning chamber where they are combustedin a high oxygen content environment. It is to

help increase the performance and to help decrease the greenhouse effect.

2.2 Durian Husk

Durian (DuriozibethinusMurr.) belongs to the genus Durioand the family Bombacaceae, which is

best known for showy flowers and woody or thin-shelled pods filled with small seeds and silky

or cottonlike fiber. It is the most important native fruit of southeastern Asia and neighboring

islands. Widely known and revered in southeast Asia as the "king of fruits", the durian is

distinctive for its large size, unique odor, and formidable thorn-covered husk. Durian

(DuriozibethinusMurr.) belongs to the genus Durioand the family Bombacaceae, which is best

known for showy flowers and woody or thin-shelled pods filled with small seeds and silky or

cottonlike fiber. It is the most important native fruit of southeastern Asia and neighboring
islands. Widely known and revered in southeast Asia as the "king of fruits", the durian is

distinctive for its large size, unique odor, and formidable thorn-covered husk.

Delignification with acidic sodium chlorite and mercerization with 17.5% (w/v) sodium
hydroxide (NaOH) wereperformed to extract cellulose from durian rind. After mercerization
process, 33.12 0.108% of cellulose wasobtained. The result shows the similar yield with stalk
fiber such as rice, wheat and barley that consist of cellulose approximately 28 - 48, 29 - 51 and
31 - 45%, respectively and 26 - 43% in bamboo cane fiber (Han and Rowell, 1996).The density
of untreated durian rind, holocellulose and cellulose were measured without grinding the
samples. Table 1 shows the density of samples and found that the density of sample was
increased after each stage due to
chemical process. Alkali treatment or mercerization is a chemical process of exposing natural
fibers in an interaction with high concentration of basic aqueous solution to stimulate sufficient
swelling by removing non-cellulosic components such as lignin, hemicellulose, pectin, waxes
and impurities (Goda et al., 2006). These indicated that amorphous regions were removed
leaving behind the crystalline regions and providing crystalline cellulose to improve its density.
The increasing of crystalline regions was also expected to increase their stiffness and rigidity and
also strength due to the regulated and dense molecular structure. In addition, the higher amount
of cellulose
increases the Youngs modulus in the crystalline region along the longitudinal direction
(Sakurada et al., 1962; Johar
et al., 2012). It was assumed that the mechanical properties of fibers and reinforcing efficiency
will be improvedafter treatment (Rong et al., 2001). Sun et al. (2005) reported that density of
cellulose crystal are 1.582 and 1.599
g/cm3 for alpha and beta polymorphs respectively because native cellulose of high plants is a
mixture of alpha and
beta cellulose,

thus the true

density of 100%

crystalline natural

cellulose is between

1.582 and 1.599 g/cm3.

FTIR spectroscopy is an appropriate technique to establish the variations introduced by different treatments on
the chemical structure of extracted sample (Zuluaga et al., 2009). Fig. 1 shows the FTIR spectra for (a) untreated
durian rind; (b) holocellulose and (c) cellulose.

The peak near 3400-3200 cm-1 was observed in all spectra, which corresponds to O-H stretching vibration of
OH group in cellulose molecules as well as intramolecular and intermolecular hydrogen bonds (Sun et al., 2004;
Yan et al., 2009; Tawakkal et al., 2010; Mandal and Chakrabarty, 2011). It was suggested that the peak was
narrower or high intensity for cellulose, which demonstrated that extracted cellulose contained more OH group
than untreated durian rind and holocellulose. The absorbance at 1602 cm -1 was shown in untreated durian rind and
holocellulose. These results indicated that chlorination could not remove lignin completely. However, this peak
disappeared from cellulose after mercerization due to extraction process that has removed most lignin from
structure. Generally, the band at 1466-1421 cm-1 is attributed to lignin and xylan due to CH3 deformation
(asymmetric) in lignin as well as CH2 bending (Mahato et al., 2013) and this peak was found in extracted cellulose
as shown in Fig. 1. However, Mahato et al. (2013) also reported that the band at around 1430 cm-1 to the scissoring
motion of cellulose I and band at around 1420 cm-1 to the cellulose II. The band around 1313 cm-1 in spectra of
cellulose can be attributed to CH2 wagging vibration in cellulose and the band around 1155 cm-1 was representative
of anti-symmetric bridge stretching of C-O-C groups (Spiridon et al., 2010). Moreover, the FTIR spectrum shows a
peak of 1237 cm-1 for untreated durian rind which indicated C-O stretching vibration of acetyl group of lignin and
similar peak was also illustrated at 1239 cm-1 in holocellulose. However, this peak absented after mercerizationindicated
that lignin was removed completely (Tawakkal et al., 2010). Holocellulose and cellulose gave spectrum
around 1425 cm-1 which was attributed to the CH2 bending. The band at 892 cm-1 was referred to the glycosidic C-H
rock vibration which was characteristic of cellulose structure (Li et al., 2014). These results indicated that cellulose
molecule was not removed during extraction using chemical treatments both of delignification and mercerization
stages. The main peaks for each sample are concluded in Table 2.

2.3 Banana Waste Characterization

There are several different species of bananas that are cultivated today, all of which belong to the

family Musaceae, and the genusMusa. The most commonly cultivated one (the one that is found

in grocery stores) is the Cavendish cultivar. This banana, Musaacuminata, makes up 95% of all

banana sales in North America (Koeppel 2010). Although none of the mare nearly as popular as

Cavendish, there are of course many other cultivars produced. The Lady Finger and Orito

varieties are much shorter and stubbier. There are also the Apple Bananas, PisangRaja, Red

and Plantains, the last of which actually belong to the Species M.paradisiaca and are much

starchierand less sweet than the other bananas

(Nsabimana2014).ExcludingthestarchyPlantains,theothercultivarsareallconsidereddessert

bananas which just means they are sweeter and softer.