INTRODUCTION

During the previous season, the oil palm sector exploded, with Indonesia surpassing
Malaysia as the global leader in palm oil output. For the foreseeable future, Indonesia will
continue to outperform Malaysia in terms of production rate. In 2006 to 2007, Indonesia and
Malaysia account for about 87 percent of world production where Indonesia and Malaysia
contributed 15.900 and 15.881 million tons of palm oil, respectively. Indonesia is forecast to
produce 18.3 million metric tons of palm oil in 2007/2008 (Adnan, 2015). Palm oil is the most
often used fractionated oil while industrial plants nowadays may fractionate up to 2000
tonnes of palm oil each day. Palm oil is fractionated in two ways: crude and refined, with the
latter being the most prevalent. It is the focus of this research is to investigate the chemical
and melting properties of refined palm oil and its fractions using dry fractionation as a
separation technique (Vogelgesang, 2018). Dry fractionation, the simplest and cheapest
fractional crystallisation approach (no chemicals, no effluent, and no losses), was exploited
in the oil processing industry to expand the use of a wide range of fatty materials and to
partially or completely replace chemical modifications.

Dry Fractionation is a process to separate vegetable oils such as palm oil into two
fractions (Olein and Stearin) by the crystallization properties of the oils. Other studies also
described it as a separation from solid liquid portion of the oil is achieved by a process of
gradual cooling preheated oil. The dry fractionation basically contains two main processes
which is Crystallization and Filtration. In edible oil processing, the fractionation process
including with controlling cooling of the oil, thereby inducing a partial, or ‘fractional’,
crystallization. The remaining liquid (olein) is then separated from the solid fraction (stearin)
by means of a filtration or centrifugation. The olein is fully liquid at ambient temperature in
warm climates. It can be blended with various vegetable oils in different proportions to obtain
liquid oils which can withstand lower temperatures. For example, blends of palm olein with
more than 70% soft oils such as soybean oil, corn oil or canola oil remain clear at 0oC for at
least 5 hours (Beng, 2017). Palm olein additionally extends and improves the oxidative
stability of soft oils. RBD palm Stearin is a solid fraction generated by fractionating palm oil
at regulated temperatures following crystallisation. RBD Palm Stearin is used in the
production of shortenings and margarine. The liquid fraction produced by fractionating palm
oil after crystallisation at regulated temperatures is known as RBD palm olein. It is
particularly well suited to frying and cooking. The procedure is divided into two parts.

The first stage is crystallisation, which is a separation process for separating solids
that have dissolved in dry fractionation by lowering the temperature of the solution, causing it
to melt. The oil is melted in the crystallisation stage to eliminate the memory effect before it
is cooled in the crystallizer chamber. During crystallisation, RBD palm oil is heated first and
then chilled within the crystallizers using a controlled cooling schedule. The oil forms a slurry
of crystal and liquid oil at the end of this cooling process. The crystallisation temperature,
cooling rate, and agitation speed all have an impact on the product fractions. For the stearic
fraction, it is only being affected by the cooling rate and on the other hand, olein fraction is
affected by the crystallization temperature and cooling rate. The stearin can then be
separated from oil olein by different methods and the oil is thus divided into two fractions
which are stearin with a high melting point and olein with a low cloud and melting points
(Nusantoro, 2007).The second phase is filtration, which involves separating solid materials
from liquid by forcing the latter to flow through the pores of the solids. The crystal slurry will
pass through a membrane filter to separate the olein (liquid oil) from the stearin (crystal).
The palm oil for RBD came from a nearby refinery. The oil was then dry fractionated to
separate the stearin and olein fractions. Dry fractionation yields palm stearin and palm mid
fraction, which are both hard fractions and present as by-products.

Palm stearin is the solid phase of RBD-palm oil fractionation while palm mid fraction is the
solid phase of palm olein fractionation. Even though both palm stearin and palm mid fraction
are the solid phases of the dry fractionation process, it seems that they have different
physicochemical properties. The main reason is RBD-palm oil and palm olein which served
as raw materials for dry fractionation have different levels of unsaturation (Zaliha, 2004)
References
1) Adnan, H. (2015). Oil palm industry concerned over unabated increase of production
costs. 1-2. Retrieved from Star online.

2) Beng, Y. C. (2017). BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE TOGETHER:

MALAYSIAN PALM OIL AND EUROPEAN CONSUMPTION . Palm Oil Development
, 4-5.

3) Nusantoro, B. P. (2007). Dry Fractionation Of RBD ( Refined Bleached And

Deodorized ) Palm Oil. 27(4), 171-175.

4) Vogelgesang, F. (2018). BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE TOGETHER:

MALAYSIAN PALM OIL AND EUROPEAN CONSUMPTION. JOPEH.

5) Zaliha, O. (2004). Crystallization properties of palm oil by dry fractionation. Elsevier ,

1-6.