Utilization of Oil Recovery Process on Spent Bleaching Earth into Non-Hazardous Waste

Abstract

Crude palm oil purifying process is an important process in refining vegetable and animal oils to remove the impurities. This process produces spent bleaching earth (SBE) waste which needs to be reprocessed before being released into the environment because it contains 20-30% of oil. However, based on Government Regulation Number 22/2021, SBE was removed from the list of hazardous waste on condition the oil contained is under 3%. In this study, the oil content in SBE was extracted using maceration process. The aim of this study was to measure the remain oil content in de-oiled bleaching earth (de-OBE) using various solvent. The solvents used are n-hexane, acetone, and ethanol with SBE to solvent ration. The highest yield obtained was 22% using n-hexane as a solvent. To determine the quality of the recovered oil, water and free fatty acid contained were analyzed. After being extracted, the remaining oil content in the de-OBE was measured. The remaining oil content in de-OBE for n-hexane and acetone as solvent was under 3% but for ethanol the oil content in de-OBE was high up to 15 %.