Simulation and experiment of palm cooking oil production using batchwise solvent extraction method

Crude palm oil (CPO) is one of the primary raw materials for making cooking oil because it contains a lot of triacylglycerols (TAG). The manufacture of cooking oil from CPO is commonly carried out by chemical and physical refining processes. The cooking oil from CPO through this process is often associated with health issues mentioned as harmful to human health. The use of activated carbon is related to halal matters for Muslims. This study aims to research the TAG extraction from CPO into cooking oil through a Batchwise solvent extraction (BSE) process, then simulated using Aspen Plus V.11 software. Furthermore, experiments through the eight stages of the BSE process succeeded in purifying TAG and removing FFA impurities by using a mixture of CPO with ethanol food-grade ethanol as the single solvent. Simulation is needed as a design before it is implemented on a large scale and to get the appropriate property method to simulate experimental results. In this study, the property method of UNIQ2, NRTL, and UNIF-LL for liquid-liquid extraction (LLE) was well investigated. The results of this simulation show that the most suitable type of property method for this process was UNIQ2, with a coefficient of determination (R2) up to 1, and the product was meet the Indonesian cooking oil standards. It was also found that the product contains up to 100% TAG (R2=0.97). Then other ingredients were successfully reduced up to 0%, namely diacylglycerols (R2=0.85), monoacylglycerols (R2=1.00), free fatty acids (R2=0.98), and others (R2=0.94). Thus, these experiments and simulations prove that the BSE method can produce vegetable cooking oil with simple and green technology.