Separation of Saturated and Unsaturated Fatty Acid of Palm Fatty Acid Distillate

• Main Author: Sofyan Simamora, Willy
• Format: Final Project
• Language: Indonesia
• Online Access: https://digilib.itb.ac.id/gdl/view/38521
• Institution: Institut Teknologi Bandung

Palm fatty acid distillate (PFAD) is a by-product of crude palm oil’s refining process. High composition of fatty acid in PFAD making it can be used as a source of fatty acids in the production of thermal stabilizers of polyvinyl chloride (PVC). On industrial scale, fatty acids used is tall oil fatty acid (TOFA). Due to environmental issues of TOFA, PFAD is developed as an alternative. Since DALS has the same amount of saturated and unsaturated fatty acids, stabilizers produced from DALS are solid-liquid. This appearance is different from common stabilizers so less preferably by consumers. Therefore, saturated fatty acids in PFAD need to be separated before being processed further to be PVC stabilizers. One method of separating fatty acids is aductive crystallization which has been widely used in the separation of saponified oil and methyl esters. However, this method has never been applied on PFAD separation. The objective of this research is to test the performance of the aductive crystallization method on PFAD separation. The separation begins with mixing of urea, PFAD and solvent in a jacketed glass reactor. Cooling time is varied between 3 to 6 hours at 15 to 25oC. The ratio of urea to DALS is varied in between 1 to 2. The solvent used and the concentration of urea is also varied. The quality of the separation is evaluated by iodine number. The of iodine number of unsaturated fractions and saturated fractions is respectively in the range of 56–84 g I2/100 g and 10–30 g I2/100 g. The urea crystals has reached the equilibrium state 6 hours. The cooling temperature of 15 and 25oC isn’t significantly effect the iodine number of unsaturated fractions. The increasing of the ratio of urea to PFAD increases the iodine numbers of unsaturated fractions and a decreases the yield of the separation. Using methanol as the solvent produces higher iodine numbers of unsaturated fractions than ethanol. Dissolving 14 and 51% of urea in methanol gives significant iodine number differences in unsaturated fractions.