Specialty oleochemicals from palm oil via enzymatic syntheses

• Main Authors: Basri, Mahiran, Raja Abdul Rahman, Raja Noor Zaliha, Salleh, Abu Bakar
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Malaysian Palm Oil Board 2013
• Online Access: http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/30386/1/Specialty%20oleochemicals%20from%20palm%20oil%20via%20enzymatic%20syntheses.pdf; http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/30386/; http://jopr.mpob.gov.my/speciality-oleochemicals-from-palm-oil-via-enzymatic-synthesis/
• Institution: Universiti Putra Malaysia

Palm-based spe­cialty oleo­chem­i­cals are spe­cial indus­trial chem­i­cals from palm oil which are highly priced with high profit mar­gins. These oleo­chem­i­cals exhibit inter­est­ing prop­er­ties such as excel­lent emol­liency, sur­face activ­ity, emul­si­fy­ing prop­er­ties as well as ben­e­fi­cial bio­log­i­cal prop­er­ties. As such, these com­pounds find many appli­ca­tions in the cos­metic, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and food indus­tries. Enzyme catal­ysed syn­the­ses of these chem­i­cals are prefer­able as com­pared to their usual petro-chemical coun­ter­part as these processes are nature iden­ti­cal and ‘green’. Lipase-catalysed syn­the­ses of spe­cialty oleo­chem­i­cals were car­ried out. The oleo­chem­i­cals include amino acid esters, fatty alka­nolamides, fatty esteramines, var­i­ous wax esters, medium chain triglyc­erides and bio­log­i­cally active esters. The opti­mi­sa­tion of the reac­tion con­di­tions was dis­cussed. The effects of the para­me­ters influ­enc­ing the reac­tions includ­ing tem­per­a­ture, reac­tion time, sub­strate molar ratio, amount of enzyme and sol­vents used were pre­sented. The char­ac­ter­is­tics of the reac­tion sys­tem and the prod­ucts were determined.