BLEACHING OF PALM OIL USING ACTIVATED CHARCOAL
ABSTRACT
This project work is on the bleaching of palm oil using activated charcoal.
The charcoal used for this work was made from pieces of animal bone by carbonization method. It was then activated into two different samples. Firstly, the basic sample was activated using anaphoric acid (H2 s04) while the other was activated by just heating as a control for the experiment; both at a constant temperature of 5000c and approximate time of 2hours.
They were both size reduced into fines and sieved into particle 3ye of 150um portion of the crude palm oil was degummed and neutralized for bleaching. Each interval of bleaching with both the acid activated and the ordinary activated charcoal was 8mins and temperature of 1500c over a hot plate, and subsequent filtration of the solution.
A spectrophotometer was used to measure the absorbance of the oils (crude and bleached) at selected wave length of 480Um. This was converted as the degree of colour reduction expressed in percentages.
Results obtained showed that optimum quantity of the charcoal for bleaching is 5% by weight, of the oil, which gives a percentage colour reduction as 97. 14% for the acid activated and 93.57% for the calcinated sample.
Also, the characterization of both the original oil and the bleaching oil showed that the later has appreciable properties. Hence colour reduction was observable by naked eyes.
