Calcium soap is potentially used as fat supplements for ruminants since it contains high concentration of fat and calcium that are useful for ruminants. The consumption of calcium soap may increase the yield and the fat content of milk, as well as increase the ruminant’s fertility. Calcium soap can be produced from palm fatty acid distillate (PFAD), which is a by-product of crude palm oil (CPO) refining process, and calcium oxide (CaO). In this study, the effect of CaO quality on the acid value of the product has been observed. It was found that the reaction with lower concentration of active calcium of CaO resulted in products with a higher acid value, which indicates a lower reaction conversion. Thus, the produced calcium soap requires further treatment in order to remove the unreacted calcium and free fatty acid. Washing with hexane followed by either vacuum or convection drying has been found to be able to reduce the acid value of the product significantly.
Dragon fruit is one of the tropical fruits can be grown in Indonesia. The skin of dragon fruit, which is accounted for 30-35% of the whole fruit usually thrown away as waste. This study aims to produce a bioactive extract from extraction of dragon fruit skin that is rich in phenolic and pigment compounds then it used as food additives. The variation that was used in this study includes the application of drying as pre-treatment of dragon fruit skin and the extraction methods (maceration and Soxhlet extraction). The obtained extracts were evaluated for the amount of total phenolic compounds and pigments (anthocyanin and betacyanin). Drying of dragon fruit skin was found to yield lower amounts of bioactive materials, which may occur due to the thermal degradation even though a low drying temperature was used. In addition, the maceration method was found to give a higher amount of bioactive materials compared with the Soxhlet method. The extraction with the highest yield of bioactive materials was obtained by the use of fresh dragon fruit skin and maceration for 240 minutes, which gave amounts of anthocyanin, betacyanin, and total phenolic compounds of 0.08, 0.04, dan 0.35 mg/g fresh dragon fruit skin, respectively.
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