Study on degumming process of cpo ( crude palm oil) by using ultrafiltration membrane

Abstract

Crude Palm Oil must be previously purified before applied to various kinds of food to meet the requirements as edible oil. Common pre treatment for this process is known as gum separation process or degumming. Membrane technology which uses component separation principles based on molecular size and weight, is known as an alternative to be applied in degumming, beside other conventional method such as wet degumming by acid (H3PO4) addition. The research studied the effect of pressure and concentration on the peerfomance ultrafiltration membrane. The effect of pressure and concentration was tested by Honestly Significant Different test. To find out the optimum condition for the process, a Surface Respond Method (RSM) was applied. The result obtained was also compared with compentional processing based on physicochemical analysis of oil such as acid number, moisture content, iod number, unsaponified fraction, viscosity, saponification number, peroxide number, clarity, phosphor concentration and β carotene content. This result of this research showed that the effect of pressure and concentration on ultrafiltration membrane prosess was not significantly different with respect of phospolipid rejection that was betwen 60.43 to 81.61%. However, this result showed a significant difference with conventional processing. Ultrafiltration membrane process can reduce acid number to 10.61%, which is lower than results of conventional processing of 15.95%. The reduction of β carotene content was occurred in both processing, namely 26.2% for conventional process and 14.56% for ultrafiltration. Concentration treatment 44% (v/v) and pressure 8 bar on ultrafiltration membrane was the optimum result with flux of 428 l/m2.jam.