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Potential application of waste neem leaves for bleaching of low‐quality crude palm oil
Author(s) -
Adriani Liman Arum,
Juanita Stephani,
Edi Soetaredjo Felycia,
Ismadji Suryadi
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
asia‐pacific journal of chemical engineering
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.348
H-Index - 35
eISSN - 1932-2143
pISSN - 1932-2135
DOI - 10.1002/apj.459
Subject(s) - mandala , engineering , geography , archaeology
Conversion of crude palm oil to refined edible oil involves removal of the products of hydrolysis and oxidation, the color and the flavor. The refining routes of palm oil are quite identical. There are two routes are taken to process crude oil into refined oil, which are chemical (basic) refining and physical refining. The methods differ basically in the way the fatty acids are removed from the oil. In practice, palm oil bleaching is accomplished by heating the oil in the presence of bleaching agent at certain time until the desired color is reached. The improvement in color is as a result of the removal of organic compounds such as β-carotene, xanthophylls, chlorophyll, etc.[1] Even the acid-activated clays (bleaching earth) are efficient and effective adsorbent for bleaching of crude edible oils,[2–4] some attention had been directed to the use of renewable resources such as agro waste materials.[1,5] In this paper, an alternative adsorbent, neem (Azadirachta indica) leaves powder, was used for bleaching of low-quality crude palm oil. The advantages of using neem leaves powder for bleaching purpose are environmental friendly and have similar adsorption capacity to activated bleaching earth. In order to enhance the adsorption capacity of the neem leaves powder, the surface modification using acid was conducted. Adsorption mechanism of β-carotene onto active functional group surface of neem leave powder was also proposed.