urea fractionation of used palm oil methyl esters
Urea has show a remarkable ability in forming well-defined and easy-to-handle crystalline complexes.
In general, the use of urea as a ligand provides efficient separation in fat with a wide variety of straight chain compound but is not applicable to fat containing branched or cyclic compound.
This study was conducted to investigate the fractionation of used frying oil (palm-based) methyl ester (UFOME) with urea and the separation profile according to their degree of unsaturation.
A comparison on the effectiveness of fractionation was made with the increment of the treatment level of urea.
The urea was added at different ratios (UFME: urea,w/w) i.e. 1:0.5,1:0.75 and 1:1.
it was found that the most effective fractionation of the unsaturated methyl ester (ME) was achieved when the treatment lavel of UFME:urea was 1:0.75.
The unsaturated ME was enriched from 58.81% to 88.03% after the urea fractionation.
The enriched unsaturated ME will be a useful feedstock for oleochemicals and other processes requiring hight level of unsaturation in their fatty acyl chain.