Continuous Production of Palm Methyl Esters With Recovery of Carotenoids Using Membrane Technology

139 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1999.Palm oil contains high concentration of valuable carotenoids which are usually destroyed during conventional oil processing. The objective of this research was to develop a new process for recovering carotenoids by converting palm oil into methyl esters through continuous transesterification followed by separation of the carotenoids from the esters using membrane technology. Reaction temperature affected significantly the batch transesterification of palm oil primarily in its initial stages. The optimum temperature and catalyst concentration were 60°C and 1% KOH, respectively. The kinetics of triglyceride, diglyceride and monoglyceride hydrolysis reactions followed second order kinetics up to 30 minutes of reaction time. The activation energy of the reactions were 14,658, 14,248 and 6,449 cal.mole-1.oK -1 for triglyceride, diglyceride and monoglyceride respectively. With a continuous transesterification process, the optimum methyl ester conversion was obtained with a residence time up to 60 minutes. DS7 nanofiltration membrane was used to recover carotenoids from red palm methyl esters. The membrane had an average flux of 10.9 liters per square meter per hour and a carotene rejection of 65% at a pressure of 4.14 kPa and a temperature of 40°C. A multistage membrane process was designed for continuous production of palm carotene concentrate and decolorized methyl esters. With a feed rate of 10 tons/h red palm methyl esters, containing 0.5 g/l carotenes, the process could produce 426 l/h carotene concentrate containing 9 g/l carotene and 10,654 l/h decolorized methyl esters. The economics of the process is attractive.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD