The Effectiveness of Delignification and Juice Clarification using Fungi Xylanase from Rice Straw and Oil Palm Leaf

Abstract

Microbial enzyme which is xylanase plays an important role as biocatalyst in many reactions of industrial applications purposes. The xylanase can be produced by Aspergillus niger via solid state fermentation system using agricultural waste as substrate. Xylanase is an industrially important class of enzyme that degrades xylan. There are two objectives of this study, firstly, to produce xylanase from rice straw and oil palm leaf via  solid state fermentation by Aspergillus niger and secondly, to compare its efficacy with commercial xylanase on two different kinds of application, namely, delignification of sugarcane bagasse and clarification of citrus microcarpa juice. The results presented in this study revealed that commercial xylanase was more efficient in both applications. However xylanase extracted from OPL was capable to have nearly same effective with commercial xylanase for bagasse delignification and clarification of citrus microcarpa juice compared to xylanase from rice straw .In consequence, it is suggested that the Aspergilus niger xylanase is more effective in respective applications by using oil palm leaf as substrate compared to rice straw.