Palm oil, the commodity produced mainly in Indonesia and Malaysia, is widely used for deep-frying of fast food and food derivatives. European and American markets of palm oil are affected by the concern of the toxicity potential from monochloropropanediol esters (MCPDE) and glycidyl ester (GE) that are undesirably produced from monoacylglycerol (MAG), diacylglycerol (DAG) and chlorine in refineries. Improvement of oil palm plantation, fruit harvest and oil extraction process in palm oil mills is necessary before the refinery process so that hydrolysis reactions that produce MAG and DAG and chlorine contamination can be minimized in crude palm oil (CPO). This review focuses on the quality control currently employed in the mills especially in managing free fatty acid (FFA) formation as the indicator of the hydrolysis reactions along with other quality control parameters and the reduction of chlorine content.
High free fatty acid (FFA) content results in low palm oil yield in refinery and 5 wt% are the limit for crude palm oil acceptance. Common method of the FFA quantification in the mills is titration. The intent of this study was to determine the FFA content in extracted palm oil by using Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy coupled with AOCS titration method for verification. The oil extractions took place on days 1, 5, 8, 12 and 15. The fruitlets were initially washed and autoclaved. By separating the kernel, the mesocarp was heated and pressed. After centrifugation, the oil from the top layer of extract was further analyzed. In this study, % transmittance of FFA had been measured at carboxyl band, C=O between 1730 and 1700 cm−1. The stretch of carboxyl band denotes that the FFA had proportionally increased with time. The FFA content of the samples increased in sigmoidal pattern with critical rise after day 8, reaching 15 wt% equilibrium states after 15 days. A calibration model was developed via linear regression and R2 of 0.979 indicating the results were significant.
Free fatty acids (FFAs) are derived from the undesired hydrolysis reaction of glycerides with the presence of lipase, and quantified as acid value for crude palm oil (CPO) grading. Since FFA content is directly proportional to time, duration from harvest to sterilization of fruits is not more than a day. This paper reports peculiar trend of FFA formation over time when the analysis of FFA was carried out differently. Analysis results of FFA and glyceride contents by timely picking the fruitlets (R-fruit) from fresh fruit bunch (FFB) were compared with the fruitlets from spikelet (S-fruit) that were initially removed all for 7 days. The results showed that the increment of FFA content of the latter was 10 hour faster. This implies that the fruitlets from spikelet resemble the detached fruits which having higher rate of FFA formation compared to the fruitlets that attached to FFB. By using SigmaPlot, the graphs of R-fruit and S-fruit were best fitted into damped sine, 5 parameter with linear and rational with 4 parameters respectively. Nevertheless, lower R2 value was obtained for the fruitlets from readily-removed spikelet compared to the fruitlets from FFB, indicating that other factors might have also affected the formation of FFA.
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