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Carotenoids from red palm methyl esters by nanofiltration
Author(s) -
Darnoko D.,
Cheryan Munir
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
journal of the american oil chemists' society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.512
H-Index - 117
eISSN - 1558-9331
pISSN - 0003-021X
DOI - 10.1007/s11746-006-1214-y
Subject(s) - nanofiltration , carotenoid , chemistry , carotene , palm , membrane , solvent , palm oil , lutein , chromatography , food science , organic chemistry , biochemistry , physics , quantum mechanics
Palm oil contains high concentrations of carotenoids and tocopherols that can be recovered by first converting them to methyl esters and then applying membrane technology to separate the carotenoids from the methyl esters. Several solvent‐stable nanofiltration membranes were investigated for this application. Flux with a model red palm methyl ester solution ranged from 0.5 to 10 Lm −2 h −1 , and rejection of β‐carotene was 60–80% at a transmembrane pressure of 2.76 MPa and 40°C. A multistage membrane process was designed for continuous production of palm carotene concentrate and decolorized methyl esters. With a feed rate of 10 tons per hour of red palm methyl esters containing 0.5 gL −1 β‐carotene, the process could produce 3611 L·h −1 of carotene concentrate containing 1.19 gL −1 carotene and 7500 Lh −1 of decolorized methyl esters containing less than 0.1 gL −1 β‐carotene. The economics of this process is promising.