A STUDY ON THE EXTRACTION OF LIGNIN FROM COCOA POD HUSK THEOBROMA CACAO

ABSTRACT

Cocoa (Theobroma cacao L.) fruits are important commodity of economic value since the seeds or beans is used to produce high demand products such as cocoa powder, butter and chocolate. The processing of cocoa fruits generates a large amount of cocoa pod husk discard as wastes (Alemawor et al., 2009). Cocoa pod husk represents between 70 to 75% of the whole cocoa fruit weight where each ton of cocoa fruit will produce between 700 to 750 kg of cocoa pod husks (Cruz et al., 2012). In Malaysia, the plantation of cocoa is over 20,643 hectre (Malaysia Koko Board, 2011). Hence, it can be estimated at least 320,000 kg of cocoa pod husk is generated after processing. Conventionally, these organic wastes is shipped away for processing or disposed to landfill. These large quantities of cocoa pod husk could yield a large quantity of fibrous materials which might be suitable as alternative resources especially in pulp and paper making industries.