A Review on the Fundamentals of Palm Oil Fractionation: Processing Conditions and Seeding Agents

Abstract

Fractionation is a well‐established process adopted in the fats and oils industries. It involves the separation of low and high melting triacylglycerol under controlled cooling conditions into olein and stearin fractions with distinct chemical and physical properties. Amongst the other vegetable oils, palm oil is one of the most fractionated oils in the past few decades mainly attributed to its semisolid properties. The various fraction of palm oil allows it to be used in different types of food products such as margarine, frying oil, and cocoa butter substitute. In fractionation, proper control of the fractionation conditions is important to produce the fractions with desirable stearin and olein quality. The purpose of this paper is to critically review the fractionation conditions (crystallization temperature, agitation, cooling rate and crystallization time) that affect the yield and quality of the oil produced. Additionally, it also provides the latest updates on the influence of seeding agents (diacylglycerol, monoacylglycerol, hard fat, phytosterol, phospholipid, lecithin, essential oil, sugar, polyglycerol ester, and talc) used in fractionation. This article is useful to provide a fundamental understanding of fractionation to scientists from the industries or academia working in the fats and oils industries. Practical Applications: This paper provides an in‐depth understanding of fractionation particularly on the parameters of fractionation in influencing the quality and yield of the stearin and olein produced. It also for the first time presents the effect of addition of various seeding agents on palm oil fractionation which can help the industry to select the appropriate seeding agents to improve the currently employed fractionation process. Thus, it can act as a guideline for the industry to understand and select the appropriate fractionation conditions when developing a new product using this approach. The fractionation conditions discussed here can also be used as a reference when fractionating other types of fats and oils as most of them share a common background.

Development of dual stage solvent fractionation as an approach to concentrate carotenoids from crude palm oil with high recovery: The potential use of molecular simulation as a pre‐screening tool

“…As shown in Table 4, agitation appears to aid the carotenoid recovery from CPO where the shear force promotes homogenous distribution of molecules. As a result, it enhances the formation of uniform homogeneous crystals that retain lesser liquid/carotenoids within the matrix (Tong et al, 2021). This is evidenced by the lower IV in the stearin obtained for agitated sample and the images of the crystals observed under the polarized light microscope as shown in Figure 4.…”

Lipid Fractionation and Physicochemical Characterization of Carapa guianensis Seed Oil from Guyana

“…Like other tropical oils, such as palm oil [32], coconut oil and shea butter [33], which are commonly fractionated to make specialty materials [34], CWO can be fractionated into solid (stearin) and liquid (olein) fractions. The fractionation of CWO is a potential avenue to amplify the uses and bioactivity of the oil, but it has been reported only once for Carapa grandiflora, a species of crabwood found in Western Africa [35].…”

“…The authors used dry fractionation and with acetone reported yields of 41% for the solid fraction from dry fractionation and 53% for the soluble fraction from acetone. Carapa guianensis, which has approximately 30% total saturated fatty acids compared to 40% for Carapa grandiflora [18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36], is expected to provide very different stearin and olein fractions. CWO fractionation, as a means to extend and amplify the use of the oil, is more challenging than the other tropical oils because of its high unsaturation levels.…”