Palm-based methyl ester sulphonates (MES) derived from palm oil through sulphona­tion process offer an inter­est­ing alter­na­tive to petroleum-based sur­fac­tants. This study was car­ried out to iden­tify any poten­tial envi­ron­men­tal impacts that could be asso­ci­ated with the pro­duc­tion of palm-based MES. Data on pilot plant pro­duc­tion were obtained from the Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB)’s MES pilot plant with 20 kg hr-1 capac­ity. Life cycle assess­ment (LCA) per­for­mance was based on rep­re­sen­ta­tive inven­tory data of MES processes for three years of pro­duc­tion. The results were analysed using Eco-indicator 99 method­ol­ogy oper­ated under SimaPro ver­sion 8.0.2 soft­ware. The sin­gle score results showed that the main impact con­trib­u­tors for MES pro­duc­tion at pilot plant scale were from pro­duc­tion of methyl ester, steam and methanol. Based on weighted score, the most sig­nif­i­cant impact cat­e­gories from this pro­duc­tion were fos­sil fuels, res­pi­ra­tory inor­gan­ics and cli­mate change. How­ever, there was no sig­nif­i­cant impact value on land use cat­e­gory since this study was con­ducted with best man­age­ment prac­tices in oil palm plan­ta­tion in Malaysia. From this study, it can be con­cluded that the pro­duc­tion of MES at pilot plant using the best approach used in the oil palm indus­try are more sus­tain­able and environmental-friendly.

Keywords: alpha-sulphonated methyl ester, anionic surfactant, detergent, life cycle assessment, palm oil, palm-based surfactant