Adsorption Isotherms for Bleaching Soybean Oil with Activated Attapulgite

Activated attapulgite was characterized and used as bleaching clay (adsorbent) for soybean oil. Adsorption isotherms for bleaching soybean oil were determined to investigate the applicability of the Langmuir and Freundlich equations and to elucidate the adsorption characteristics of oil on activated attapulgite. The Freundlich model was found to provide a better fit with the experimental data than the Langmuir model. The larger Freundlich constant, K _F at higher temperature indicated more effective adsorption. The heat evolved for oil bleaching increased as the levels of activated attapulgite increased from 0.5 to 3%, due to the increase in adsorptive sites with increasing attapulgite levels as well as multilayer adsorption driven by van der Waals’ forces at smaller amounts of adsorbents. There are enough adsorptive sites with 3% attapulgite to adsorb the pigments associated with soybean oil bleaching. The amount of attapulgite has no effect on ΔH _a when it is >3%, and ΔH _a is about 32 kJ/mol.