FEASIBILITY STUDY ON ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY PROCESS OF PREMIUM CRUDE PALM OIL PRODUCTION

Abstract

There are more than 149 small palm oil mill factories in Thailand.  They mostly produce low-quality crude palm oil (CPO) with high free fatty acid (6-15% of FFA) and low deterioration of bleachability index (£2.0 of DOBI). This research investigated the application of microwave technology for the production of premium CPO. In this experiment, the CPO quality from two heating processes was compared. The first process was two-timing palm spikelet heating by microwave, and the second one was one-time heating by microwave and hot air drying. The results showed that two processes could produce the premium CPO with less than 1% of FFA, more than 4 of DOBI, about 500 ppm of carotenoid content, and less than 10 meq.kg^-1 of peroxide value. The operating times of the first and the second processes were 0.28 and 2.23 h, respectively, compared with 10-15 h using the convention process.  In summary, microwave technology could reduce operating time and palm spikelet heating has a high potential process for premium CPO production.