Gas-liquid chromatography and high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) were used to determine fatty acids and triglyceride (TG) compositions of crude palm oil (CPO), refined, bleached, and deodorized (RBD) palm oil, RBD palm olein, and RBD palm stearin, while their thermal profiles were analyzed by differential scanning calorimeter (DSC). The HPLC chromatograms showed that the TG composition of CPO and RBD palm oil were quite similar. The results showed that CPO, RBD palm oil, RBD olein, and superolein consist mainly of monosaturated and disaturated TG while RBD palm stearin consists mainly of disaturated and trisaturated TG. In DSC cooling thermograms the peaks of triunsaturated, monosaturated and disaturated TG were found at the range of -48.62 to -60. 36, -25.89 to -29.19, and -11.22 to -1.69°C, respectively, while trisaturated TG were found between 13.72 and 27.64°C. The heating thermograms of CPO indicated the presence of polymorphs β 2 ′, α, β 1 ′, and β 1 . The peak of CPO was found at 4.78°C. However, after refining, the peak shifted to 6.25°C and became smaller but more apparent as indicated by RBD palm oil thermograms. The heating and cooling thermograms of the RBD palm stearin were characterized by a sharp, high-melting point (high-T) peak temperature and a short and wide low-melting point (low-T) peak temperature, indicating the presence of occluded olein. However, for RBD palm olein, there was only an exothermic low-T peak temperature. The DSC thermograms expressed the thermal behavior of various palm oil and its products quite well, and the profiles can be used as guidelines for fractionation of CPO or RBD palm oil.Paper no. J8751 in JAOCS 76, 237-242 (February 1999). KEY WORDS:Crude palm oil, crystallization, DSC thermogram, fractionation, refined bleached deodorized palm oil, refined bleached deodorized palm olein, refined bleached deodorized palm stearin.

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The triglyceride (TG) composition of palm oil is normally determined by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). The HPLC chromatograms indicated a good separation of most of the TG components in the oil. The TG can be classified based on either the TG groups, i.e., triunsaturated, monosaturated, disaturated, or trisaturated, or the number of double bonds, i.e., zero, one, two, three, or four double bonds. The more unsaturated the fatty acid, the greater the iodine value (IV). Therefore, it is hypothesized that the IV of an oil can be determined based upon the TG composition of the oil. Based on the TG groups, stepwise regression analysis showed that the areas of the disaturated, trisaturated, and triunsaturated TG peaks could predict the IV with a coefficient of determination (R 2 ) of 0.990. The regression based on the number of double bonds yielded a good regression equation with R 2 = 0.992. The important variables were the peak area of the fatty acids that contained zero, one, two, and three double bonds. This study concludes that the TG composition can be used to predict the IV of palm oil. The best prediction model is obtained by using the number of double bonds in the TG as the independent variable. JAOCS 75, 789-792 (1998).

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