Process improvement of conventional palm oil milling: depulper

One of the objectives of this study was to analyze the capability and efficiency of depulper in separating loose fruits cooked at atmospheric pressure into fibrous mesh and nuts. This analysis leads to possibility in replacing the function of conventional digester with depulper. The study confirmed that depulper gave better separation of mixture of nuts and light fibers for the fruit bunches cooked at 1 bar compared to those cooked at 3 bars. However, the equipment gave almost similar separation of fibrous mesh at both pressures. Thus the study confirmed the proposed depulper can be integrated to the rest of the palm oil milling process in a conventional palm oil mill as well as integrating it in the proposed alternative palm oil milling process

Process improvement of conventional palm oil milling: continuous cooker

The objective of this study is to improve the conventional milling process in palm oil processing by replacing the function of the current used horizontal sterilizer with a Continuous Cooker. A trial study of Continuous Cooker was conducted and results showed that the cooker operated for 55 minutes using low pressure steam of 1 bar and cooking temperature of 98°C. At these operating conditions, the cooker was capable of carrying out the functions of a horizontal batch sterilizer by achieving most of the conventional sterilization purposes. This was proven by the results obtained from trial runs and laboratory analysis conducted on the equipment and its samples