Affiliation:
1. Department of Chemical Engineering, University Institute of Engineering and Technology, C.S.J.M. University, Kanpur-208024, India
Abstract
In this work, the efforts were made to reduce high free fatty acid (FFA) content in non-edible karanja and
jatropha vegetable oils below 1 mg KOH/g. The process was optimized in terms of amount of sulphuric
acid used in pre-treatment of the studied non-edible oils. Various adsorbents like activated carbon,
alumina, alumina-silica, calcined alumina and calcined alumina-silica exhibited significant removal
of FFA in a single-stage filtration process. Pre-treatment of test oil with calcined alumina-silica as
adsorbent was found to be the most appropriate for the removal of free fatty acids. Ultraviolet-visible
spectroscopy (UV) analysis showed that the original composition of test oil was not changed after the
pre-treatment process.
Publisher
Asian Journal of Chemistry