Globally, approximately 164 million tonnes of dry mass of oil palm fronds are produced each year (Sauvant et al., 2015). At present, oil palm leaves are used as fodders or left to decompose in the field. Main Researcher: Dr Halimah MuhamadEmail: halimah@mpob.gov.my

The transformation of agriculturalbased economy to an industrial-based economy in Malaysia has driven the growth of downstream oleochemical industries. Many derivatives from palm-based oleochemical materials have been aggressively produced and examined for their potential applications. One of which is polymer materials that have vast applications in the pharmaceutical, cosmetic, personal care, detergent and chemical industries. […]

Polyols are prepared from unsaturated vegetable oils by introducing hydroxyl groups at the position of double bonds (Narine et al., 2007). Hydroxyl groups can be introduced in many ways, resultingin different polyol structures, which when converted to polyurethane (PU), impart different properties to the final product (Lin et al., 2007). Primary hydroxyl groups in polyols […]

Global consumers are increasingly concerned with environmental issues and this has encouraged industries to introduce environmental-friendly products (Ragauskas et al., 2006). One of such industries that is adopting the ‘green’ movement is the polyol and polyurethane (PU) industries, where polyol producers and scientists worldwide have been actively producing polyols from renewable feedstock such as palm […]

Microemulsions are normally isotropic (or clear), very small in droplet size (<100 nm), low in viscosity and are thermodynamically stable solu-tions. However, the ordinary emulsions appear as milky white dispersions with higher viscosity, droplet size of >0.5 µm and are only kinetically stable. Thus, the properties of microemulsion systems have attracted many researchers, formulators, manufacturers […]