Production of crude palm oil through microwave pretreatment cum solvent extraction / Jason Tan Chia Xern

Jason Tan , Chia Xern (2017) Production of crude palm oil through microwave pretreatment cum solvent extraction / Jason Tan Chia Xern. Masters thesis, University of Malaya.

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Abstract

Conventional palm oil milling involves multiple steps after fruit collection and the oil clarification step involves introduction of large amount of water into the pressed oil, which results in large amount of wastewater. The present study investigated a combined process of pretreatment using microwave and solvent extraction to mill crude palm oil, with no introduction of water or steam. High oil yield was obtained from fresh palm fruits through microwave pretreatment in a 42 L, 1000 W and 2450 MHz microwave oven; and followed by hexane extraction. Besides obtaining up to 30% oil yield, the established optimum condition (microwave pretreatment of 10 min, solvent extraction of 12 h) also produced oil with low free fatty acid (<1.0%) and acceptable anisidine value (<3.0 meq/kg). The produced oil has a novel fatty acid composition that does not resemble conventional crude palm oil and crude palm kernel oil. The leached oil during microwave pretreatment has 6.3% lauric acid, while the subsequently solvent extracted oil has 1.5%. Factors affecting the oil quality were investigated and duration of the microwave pretreatment is the major attribution to poor oil quality. The duration has to be optimized to result in ruptured fruitlets to ensure solvent extraction effectiveness; but not to the extent of causing oxidation. The present study suggests that the microwave pretreatment should not be longer than 12 min as the oil produced after 15 mins contains oxidation products, namely, 1-methylcyclopentanol (12.96%), 1-tetradecanol (9.44%), 1-nonadecene (7.22%), nonanal (7.13%) and 1-tridecene (5.09%), which is postulated to be the results of fibre degradation to oxidation products. In summary, the findings in the present study show that microwave pretreatment is a potential alternative milling process for crude palm oil, with advantageous omission of wet treatment with steam in the current conventional and commercial process.

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