Feasibility of Vacuum Distillation of Free Fatty Acids (FFAs) from Crude Palm Oil (CPO) Recovered from Palm Oil Mill Effluent (POME): Preliminary Test Using the Very High-FFA CPO

摘要

In this investigation, the high-FFAs CPO from the milling process was used instead of the CPO separated from the POME. The CPO before separation mainly consisted of palmitic acid (42.07%), oleic acid (38.86%), linoleic acid (7.98%) and stearic acid (3.95%). Three batch of vacuum distillation in a 40-L stainless steel cylindrical reactor with 28L working volume were performed. The average time for each batch was 7.2 hours. For batch 1, 2 and 3, the beginning and setting temperatures were 27.4oC and 230oC; 29.5oC and 250oC; 30.5oC and 250oC, respectively. The vacuum pressures were about -740 mmHg, -600 mmHg and -730 mmHg, respectively. The original and final FFAs content in the CPO were 25.70% and 14.34%; 14.95% and 10.60%; and 10.29% and 5.22%, respectively. The FFAs profile of the CPO before and after the process, and of FFAs obtained from every batch were also reported. In conclusion, the FFAs in the CPO could be reduced from 25% to be less than 5% within 15 hours for 1 batch of the propose reactor under the minimum temperature of 230oC and the maximum pressure of -740 mmHg.