Separation of FFA from Partially Hydrogenated Soybean Oil Hydrolysate by Means of Membrane Processing

• Published in: Journal of the American Oil Chemists' Society 2011-07, Vol.88 (7), p.1053-1060
• Main Authors: Jala, Ram Chandra Reddy, Guo, Zheng, Xu, Xuebing
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Agriculture; Biological and medical sciences; Biomaterials; Biotechnology; Cellulose; Chemistry; Chemistry and Materials Science; Ethanol; Fat industries; Fatty acids; Fluctuations; Food engineering; Food industries; Food Science; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; General aspects; Hydrogenation; Hydrolysates; Industrial Chemistry/Chemical Engineering; Membrane filtration; Membrane separation; Membranes; Methanol; Original Paper; Partially hydrogenated soybean oil (PHSO); Polyamides; Pore size; Soybean oil; Soybeans; Trans fats; Trans fatty acids (TFA); Ultra filtration; Vegetable oils
• ISSN: 0003-021X; 1558-9331
• DOI: 10.1007/s11746-011-1760-9

Different types of commercial porous and non-porous polymeric membranes have been investigated for their capabilities to separate free fatty acids (FFA) from hydrolysate of partially hydrogenated soybean oil. A regenerated cellulose (RC, PLAC) membrane exhibited the most prominent difference in rejection between FFA and glycerides and the highest flux (27 kg h −1  m −2 ) in hydrolysate ethanol solution. The results also showed that, besides the pore size of membrane, the membrane flux depended largely on the property matching between membrane and solvent, as observed (40 kg h −1  m −2 ) flux was achieved with methanol but no flux detected with hexane for PLAC. The polyvinyl alcohol (PVA, NTR-729 HF) and Polyamide (PA, NTR-759HR) membranes gave the second and third highest flux (10.1 and 5.7 kg h −1  m −2 , respectively), where solute rejections for NTR-759HR were 95.9% for triacylglycerols (TG), 83.3% for diacylglycerols (DG); 87.7% for monoacylglycerols (MG) and 22.9% for FFA, respectively. A discontinuous membrane filtration using an RC membrane with ethanol changed the composition of hydrolysate from 32.2:34.2:7.9:25.7 TG/DG/MG/FFA to 47.8:36.0:10.2:6.0. The results from this work proved that FFA can be efficiently separated from a hydrolysis mixture of oil using an RC membrane in methanol and ethanol.