Terpineol, a promising valorisation product of pine industry, is widely used as an active ingredient for disinfectant soap, cleansers, perfumes, and pharmaceutical purposes. Synthesis of terpineol is generally carried out by separation of α-pinene compounds from crude turpentine through fractionation and then hydrated (addition of water) with the help of acid catalysts. However, direct turpentine hydration without pre-fractionation process can be more beneficial from economic and process point of views. This study aims to investigate the effect of both single and mixed/combined catalysts towards terpineol yield. Combined strong and weak acid catalysts were required to obtain high feed conversion and terpineol yield. The selectivity of terpineol is then correlated to the solubility of a weak/organic acid. In this study, the highest yield of terpineol was 54.0 ± 8.2%-w/w using combination of formic acid and sulphuric acid.

Oleic acid, one of the major components of palm oil, has attracted much interest in modern oleochemistry. The internal olefin group in oleic acid is a useful functional group in the transformation of a fatty acid to other functional chemicals and materials. In this paper, we discuss the application of the olefin metathesis reaction by preparing a long-chain dicarboxylic acid and alkene from the ester of oleic acid. The internal olefin metathesis reaction of methyl oleate produced dimethyl 9-oktadecendioate and 9-octadecene in the presence of a ruthenium Grubbs II (second generation) catalyst with a 51% yield. We also found that there was a higher amount of the E isomer products than the Z isomer products.

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Zeolites are microporous crystalline aluminosilicates extensively used as adsorbents, catalysts, and ion exchange beds. The adsorption property of zeolite is expected to be applied as a decolorization agent for terpineol. Terpineol is an alcohol compound derived from turpentine oil and widely used as an active ingredient for disinfectants, cleansers, perfumes, and pharmaceutical purposes. Industrial-scale of terpineol production used two stages of reaction: the first stage is hydration of turpentine into terpin hydrate and the second stage is dehydration of terpin hydrate to terpineol. However, as terpin hydrate is easily oxidized, the product color will change from clear into dark solution and make the price of product cheaper. This study aims to increase terpineol selling price by removing unreacted terpin hydrate (decolorization) from crude terpineol. Zeolite is the main absorbent used in this study along with other similar materials i.e. activated carbon and silica gel. Performances of the adsorbent are indicated by its adsorption capacity and color clarity analysis. The results would be analyzed using GC-MS. Based on the experiment, it can be concluded that the best adsorbent is zeolite activated by acetic acid with 8-15 mg/g adsorption capacity and producing a terpineol purity of 83.5%. This activated zeolite was able to remove terpin hydrate from 9.41% to 0% and other impurities from 14.06% to 6.78%.

The injection of surfactant is potential to be lost during the process due to the adsorption of surfactant into the core. It is therefore crucial to analyzed the concentration of surfactant before and after injection to the core. Many methods are developed for determining the content of surfactant using UV-Vis Spectrophotometer by utilizing the chromophore group of the chemical. In this study, quantification of nonionic surfactant that absent of chromophore group was performed using a combination of mobile Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) with Solid Phase Extraction (SPE). SPE was used to extract the samples that dissolved in water, whereas NMR was used to identify the levels of nonionic surfactants that dissolved in deuterized solvents. Internal standard chemical was added to the sample to verify the concentration of samples. As a stationary phase was SPE C-18 and eluent was methanol, ethyl acetate, and n-hexane. Furthermore, the SPE results were measured using mobile 1H NMR 43 MHz with selected solvents namely deuterated chloroform (CDCl3) and internal standard Dimethyl Formamide (DMF). Optimization results for determination of surfactant concentration up to 0.5% w/w was using the C-18 stationary phase, mobile phase methanol, ethyl acetate, and n-hexane.

A method to protect the hydroxyl group of quinine via esterification is developed. The method uses acetyl and benzoyl as the protection group. The method employs no catalyst that generates reasonable yield at 83% for acetyl and 73% for benzoyl. This catalyst free method emphasizes on the importance substrate reactivity to achieve free catalyst procedure. Ester form of quinine synthesized might be further functionalized for various aims in accordance to its rich functional group and building block of quinine.

The need for fossil fuels which tends to increase without an increase in oil production has become the main factor in applying the Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) methods in the mature oil field. Chemical injection using surfactants is one of the EOR technologies that has been proved to be able to increase oil recovery. In this study, surfactants were synthesized using a fatty acid derived from palm oil as hydrophobic group and polyethylene-glycol as hydrophilic group. The use of vegetable oil as raw material is possible because it is abundant and environmentally friendly. Esterification of nonionic surfactant was performed by utilizing the azeotrope technique (Toluena-H2O) between fatty acid (oleic, stearic, palmitic and lauric acids) and polyethylene glycol (PEG) (200, 300, 400, 600, 1000, and 1500). The reaction was optimized with various moles of fatty acid and PEG equivalents (1:1,1; 1:2,5; 1;3) and various time reaction. Product surfactant was characterized by thin-layer chromatography (TLC) to determine the optimum condition and reaction conversion. The molecular structure of the surfactant was confirmed by 1H NMR. Nonionic surfactant was then analyzed by measuring the interfacial tension (IFT) of oil and water. The results showed that the optimum conditions to obtain the lowest IFT were achieved by reacting hydrophobic groups of oleic acid and hydrophilic groups of PEG-400 at an equivalent mole ratio of 1: 3 and a reaction time of 5 hours. Oleic PEG-400 surfactant was able to decrease the IFT of oil and water as low as 10-4 dyne/cm in brine salinity condition of 18000 ppm and oil 34,39 OAPI. The results was then used to design the synthesis of vegetable surfactant oil with various carbon chain lengths and functional groups as an EOR surfactant hydrophobic group.

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