?-CAROTENE SEPARATION FROM SPENT BLEACHING EARTH USING THE MACERATION METHOD

• Main Author: Afnaan Reinaldy, Abdillah
• Format: Final Project
• Language: Indonesia
• Online Access: https://digilib.itb.ac.id/gdl/view/87788
• Institution: Institut Teknologi Bandung

Crude palm oil (CPO) is one of the local natural resources with potential ?- carotene content that can be utilized. ?-carotene is a provitamin A compound that has many benefits for the human body's functions. One of the efforts to separate ?-carotene from CPO is by desorbing ?-carotene present in spent bleaching earth (SBE) using the maceration method with acetone and hexane solvents. In previous research, a similar method has been conducted by Qomariah (2009). However, in that experiment, the range of SBE to solvent ratio variation was considered too narrow. Additionally, the search for the best condition of acetone to hexane ratio was not performed. This resulted in the obtained results being far from the optimum operating conditions. Therefore, this research aims to determine the best ratio of acetone to hexane solvent and SBE to solvent ratio in order to achieve the highest yield of ?-carotene. Meanwhile, temperature and operating time are set as control variables for each variation of acetone to hexane ratio and SBE to solvent ratio. The SBE used in this experiment is the product of the olein bleaching process carried out prior to the ?-carotene separation process. The evaluation of ?- carotene content was conducted on SBE and the extracted solution using the UV-Vis spectrophotometric method to determine the value of ?-carotene yield. Based on the experiments conducted using SBE from the olein bleaching process, the best operating conditions obtained was tested on SBE sourced from the CPO processing industry. This is done to determine whether the research results can be applied in the actual industry. From this study, it can be concluded that the lower the amount of acetone and the higher the amount of n-hexane in the solvent mixture, the higher the yield of ?-carotene from SBE. The highest yield was obtained with a solvent acetone volume of 43.10%. The optimal solvent volume per mass of SBE for the highest ?-carotene yield is 7.5 mL/g; deviations from this volume reduce the ?-carotene yield. This optimal extraction condition can be applied to SBE from the CPO processing industry, yielding 1.78 mg of ?-carotene per gram of SBE.