Study on Residual Oil Recovery from Empty Fruit Bunch by Combination of Water and Steam Process

Abstract

In this study, the recovery of residual oil from the spikelet of oil palm empty fruit bunches (OPEFB) was conducted. Residual oil was present in the OPEFB due to mechanical processes such as the loading of fruit into the sterilizer cage, sterilization and threshing, in which a certain portion of the oil from the fruitlet was impregnated mainly on the surface of the spikelet rather than on the stalk of OPEFB. The highest residual oil content was found mainly in the small OPEFB (28.49 ± 5.20% dry basis). The oil extraction process was introduced as hydro solvent-assisted steam extraction, which comprises of four main steps, i.e., flooding, injection, soaking and draining. The overall process resulted in above 83% residual oil removal from the spikelet. The proposed method can be an option to be implemented in the palm oil mill because it is a chemical-free, environmentfriendly and novel process.

Improvement of residual oil recovery from oil palm biomass using high pressure water steam system for biodiesel production

“…Table 2 shows that the average weight and length of the collected OPEFB bunches was around 7.27 kg and 53.8 cm, respectively. This was considered as large bunches as according to Gomez et al (2014). Spikelet and stalk weights were around 30% and 70% from overall OPEFB bunches, respectively.…”

“…Suwanno et al (2017) and Yusoff et al (2021) studied the conversion of the residual oil from oil palm biomass for biodiesel and were able to produce palm biodiesel that met the ASTM D570-098 (2010) standard. In another study by Gomez et al (2014), 15.2 to 28.5% of residual oil were detected on outer surface of several sizes of OPEFB, while Xiang et al (2016) recorded that 13.1% of residual oil was detected on spikelet of OPEFB. Hence, recovering this residual oil is compelling.…”

“…Residual oil has been referred to as any oil that is lost during palm oil mill processing such as fresh fruit bunch pressing, threshing, and stripping processes that occurred earlier in the mill. It has been proposed that it will hold up the penetration of enzymes, chemicals, and affect the products of the bioconversion (Gomez et al 2014;Ibrahim et al 2015b). Hence, removal of residual oil is a crucial step before OPEFB can be digested and utilized.…”

“…A summary of residual oil removal techniques from OPEFB is shown in Table 1. Gomez et al (2014) attempted to remove residual oil from spikelet and was able to achieve 82% oil removal by using HYSASE (hydro solvent assisted steam extraction) technique. However, this method required one to cut the spikelets individually in order to achieve higher oil recovery.…”

Synthesis and Characterization of Polyurethanes from Residual Palm Oil with High Poly-Unsaturated Fatty Acid Oils as Additive

“…The residual palm oil (RPO) showed similar fatty acid composition to CPO but with lower oil quality due to the formation of degradation products such as free fatty acids (FFA), peroxides, etc. [ 11 ]. Therefore, with an annual production of some 19.14 million tons of crude palm oil in 2020 [ 12 ], the EFB itself can yield about 2.5 million tons of residual oil if fully recovered.…”