Deacidification of crude palm oil using hollow fiber membrane contactor system

Abstract

Deacidification process is one of the most critical step in vegetable oil refining. It represents the main economic impact on oil production, which determines the final quality of refined oil. This research aimed is to develop a hollow fiber membrane contactor system that is suitable for crude palm oil (CPO) deacidification. The scopes of this study included membrane fabrication, membrane characterization and membrane deacidification performance evaluation. Three batches of polyphenylsulfone (PPSU) hollow membrane were prepared by dry-jet/wet spinning method with various PPSU membrane concentration, ethylene glycol (EG) concentration in PPSU membrane dope solution and membrane bore fluid composition. All the prepared PPSU hollow fiber membranes were characterized using scanning electron microscopy, contact angle goniometer and field emission scanning electron microscopy for membrane morphology, membrane wettability and membrane pore size, respectively. The performance of hollow fiber membrane contactor was evaluated for CPO deacidification in term of percentage free fatty acid (FFA) removal and soap content. 14PPSU hollow fiber membrane without EG which fabricated using 100% distilled water as the membrane bore fluid in combination with 3N sodium hydroxide as liquid extractant demonstrated the highest FFA removal of 16.54% after 3 hours operation without soap formation. The developed membrane contactor system can be integrated to the current palm oil refining process to further improve the oil quality and stability of refined palm oil.