Optimal Adsorptive Bleaching of Palm Oil with Activated Beans Husks

Abstract

The effectiveness of activated bean husks for the adsorptive bleaching of palm oil was studied in this work. Optimal bleaching parameters like temperature, time and adsorbent-oil ratio were determined for the palm oil decolouration. Various weights of 1, 1.5 and 2 g of activated beans husks were contacted with crude palm oil at 50, 80, 110, 140 and 170 °C and contact times of 45, 60 and  90 minutes using 20 ml of oil sample in each case. The decolorizing effect increased linearly with temperature. Optimal adsorption conditions gave a bleaching efficiency of 98%. Langmuir, Freundlich, Temkin with Dubinin-Radushkevich isotherms were correlated, and Freundlich has the highest statistical correlation coefficient (R2) value of 0.9901. Dubinin-Radushkevich isotherm suggested chemisorption. The pseudo-second-order model provided the best fit for the kinetic study.