Development of semi-continuous mesocarp and nut separator in enhancing the recovery of crude palm oil
Current palm oil milling process involves digestion and pressing of the whole oil palm fruitlets. However, the coexistence of mesocarp fiber and nut during pressing could lead to inevitable oil loss in fiber and nut breakage. Separation of palm mesocarp fiber from nut prior to digestion and press...
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| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2020
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/92676/1/FK%202021%2020%20-%20IR.pdf |
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| Summary: | Current palm oil milling process involves digestion and pressing of the whole
oil palm fruitlets. However, the coexistence of mesocarp fiber and nut during
pressing could lead to inevitable oil loss in fiber and nut breakage. Separation
of palm mesocarp fiber from nut prior to digestion and pressing is foreseen
as a potential solution to solve the problem. Therefore, a Semi-continuous
Palm Mesocarp and Nut Separator machine to enhance the recovery of crude
palm oil has been developed. The first part of the study was to determine the
physical (mass, dimension and density) and mechanical properties (rupture
force, deformation, hardness and rupture energy) of the fruitlets (whole fruit,
nut and kernel). The results were used to determine the design parameters
for the separator machine. The machine consists of two steps process for
every cycle. The first step was to cut and remove the mesocarp fiber from its
nut (seed) as well as to remove all the mesocarp produced from the process
whereas the second step was to discharge the nut. A performance evaluation
was conducted on the developed machine under different conditions; speed
(700, 900, 1100, 1300 and 1500 rpm) and processing time (20, 30 and 40 s).
The best condition, which was at 1500 rpm of speed and 40 s of separation
time, was tested further under different loadings (2.50, 3.75 and 5.00 kg).
Further, Response Surface Methodology (RSM) optimization was carried out
to obtain the optimum process parameters to achieve maximum separation
efficiency and minimum percentage of broken nut. The results showed that
the ideal separation was obtained at a separation speed of 1100 rpm, 30 s of
time and 2.50 g of loading mass. Under this processing condition, the
machine could achieve 94.89 % of separation efficiency and 4.29 % of broken
nut. Furthermore, the oil content and oil quality (FFA, DOBI, carotene content
and colour) of the extracted oil from the separated mesocarp were also
evaluated. The results revealed that the oil complies with the Malaysian Palm
Oil Board (MPOB) standard. Increasing the digestion time from 0 to 60
minutes reduced the mesocarp oil content significantly from 100 % to 72.19 %. Overall, this study has successfully developed an effective mesocarp and
nut separator machine to obtain high oil recovery with minimal nut breakage.
The results from this study are valuable to the palm oil industry. If the system
is successfully implemented in the industry, some processes in kernel
processing plant, such as winnowing and nut polishing, can be skipped since
the nut is already isolated from the mesocarp. |
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