New Developments in Palm Oil Fractionation

Fractionation, a precursor of the modern edible oil and fat processing industry, is the oldest separation process. It plays an important role, especially in the palm oil industry, owing to the composition of palm oil which contains about equal amounts of saturated and unsaturated fatty acids. The physical nature of palm oil, exhibiting a semi-solid state in the Malaysian tropical climate, allows its separation into a low-melting fraction, olein, and a high-melting fraction, stearin (Deffense, 1985). Fractionation can be defined as the separation of a mixture into its component fractions. Generally, the concept of a physical separation process can be based on a few parameters such as differences in solidification, solubility and volatility of the different compounds. The common techniques used for fractionation are fractional crystallisation, fractional distillation, shortpath distillation, supercritical fluid extraction, liquid-liquid extraction, adsorption, complexion and membrane separation. (Kellens et al., 2007). In the oils and fats industries, fractional crystallisation is the process used for separating oils and fats into two or more components, and it involves two steps: selective crystallisation and filtration. There are three fractionation processes used to fractionate palm oil, namely, dry fractionation, detergent fractionation and solvent fractionation.

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MPOB Technical Seminar (MTecS) for University and ASEAN 2014/2015

The MPOB Technical Seminar (MTecS) series was newly introduced in 2014, and intended to be part of MPOB’s Technical Advisory Services (TAS) programme to provide and impart technical information on palm oil to industry members, university students, medical groups, academicians, researchers, government policy makers, organisations and general consumers. The programme is generally aimed at creating […]

Lipid- and Water-soluble Palm Antioxidants Reduce Development of Atherosclerosis Plaques in Rabbits

Oxidation of low-density lipoprotein-cholesterol (LDL-C), the major cholesterol-carrying lipoprotein in plasma, is commonly implicated as an initiator of atherosclerosis. Increased LDL-C concentration is a major risk factor for atherosclerosis in humans (Carmena et al., 2004). Oxidised LDL-C is engulfed by macrophages, a type of white blood cell, and this rapidly leads to the formation of […]