Fractionation Process

1. Oil and fats are mixture of triacyglycerols such as triple esters of glycerol with different
fatty acids. Therefore, fats and oils are not chemically homogenous substances but a
mixture of different triglycerides, however each of these triglycerides has a defined
melting point, influencing the physical properties of the others.
2. As a mixture of substances, therefore oil and fat have no sharp of melting point but a
melting range.
3. One distinguishes between oil and fat that are liquid at ambient temperature, at least to
the eye and fats that are solid at room temperature. However, even when appearing
liquid, oils may contain high amount of solid compound with melting points significantly
above ambient temperature.

4. Fractionation uses this property of fats such as being a mixture of different substances of
the same class. This enables one to separates a fat into fractions that are products of
different melting ranges.
5. Theoretically, these ranges can be made very narrow, assuming extremely good
separation. In practice, this is usually not necessarily commercial value and to produce
special products. The oil is that predominantly fractionated is palm oil. Palm oil
especially suitable for this technique because of its composition i.e, two almost equal
parts of saturated and unsaturated fatty acids and even more importantly, higher and
lower melting triglyceride.
6. As mentioned before, fractionation is a purely physical process. The building blocks of
fats themselves as well as triglycerides in their configuration remain untouched.
7. Next, Stages that involves in fractionation process. There are two stages which are
CRYSTALLIZATION & SEPARATION.
8. Crystallization to produce solid crystals in liquid matrix
9. Separation of the crystals from liquid matrix by filtration.
10. Now I will pass to adeeba for more explaination regarding crystallization & separation.