Fig. 17 illustrates the influence of the solvent-to-reflux ratio on
the gas load for all the extraction experiments for the separation
palmitic/(oleic + linoleic) acids from palm fatty acid mixtures. The
gas load depends not only on the operating conditions but also on
the concentration of the light component in the liquid phase. The
results show that the gas load decreases with increasing solventto-reflux
ratio. As the column diameter is directly proportional to
the gas load, operating condition must be optimized in order to
maximize the gas load, and hence minimize the column size.