Thermal and physical properties of crude palm oil with higher oleic content

Interspecific hybridization of oil palms (E. guineensis × E. oleifera) was initially exploited to provide disease resistance and, consequently, increased oleic acid content. Besides the growing importance of this cultivar to the market, there is little information about this oil’s properties. In this context, this study aimed to determine a comprehensive physicochemical and thermal characterization of hybrid palm oil (HOPO) compared with the better-known African palm oil (APO). Differences in the distribution of fatty acids, carotenoids, and tocols were observed. Minor differences in density and viscosity were found between the oils, with no relevance for the materials’ processing design. Nevertheless, HOPO showed unique crystallization behavior, which potentially can affect industrial operations, such as fractionation. HOPO did not present the two thermal characteristic regions of APO, attributed to olein and stearin fractions. The HOPO demonstrated a decrease in the melting point of more than 3 °C in relation to APO, and a reduction in the crystallization point of more than 6 °C. Furthermore, besides the higher content of unsaturated fatty acids, HOPO was more stable than APO due to a higher antioxidant content. These results could be useful to establish operation conditions for processes using palm oil from hybrid oil palm

Phospholipase cocktail : a new degumming technique for crude soybean oil

Enzymatic degumming (EDG) is an emerging alternative process for decreasing the phosphorus content, increasing the oil yield, and preserving the oil quality. Purifine (R) 3G is a cocktail of phospholipases composed of phospholipase A2 (PLA2), phospholipase C (PLC), and phosphatidylinositol phospholipase C (PI-PLC). In this study, Purifine (R) 3G was applied to crude soybean oil, and the optimum degumming conditions (enzyme con-centration, temperature, and water dosage) were determined using a central composite rotatable design (CCRD). The contents of diacylglycerols (DAGs) and free fatty acids (FFAs) in the studied system considerably increased at temperatures below 64 C and enzyme concentrations above 100 mg/kg, while the phosphorus content decreased with increasing water amount and enzyme concentration. In particular, EDG with 200 mg/kg of Purifine (R) 3G conducted for 120 min at a temperature of 60 C and water concentration of 3% (w/w) lowered the residual phosphorus content to 8.9 mg/kg and increased the FFA and DAG concentrations by 0.17% and 0.72%, respectively. Meanwhile, EDG retained the tocopherol content in crude soybean oil, maintaining its quality. Hence, Purifine (R) 3G increases the neutral oil yield (FFA and DAG), decreases the phosphorus content, and preserves the oil quality, which make it a commercially viable degumming agent