Recovery of fatty acid lights from still vapors

A fatty acids still operating primarily on coconut oil fatty acids has two condensers in series to condense the top product. Nonetheless, until recently 1% to 2% of fatty acid lights normally passed through to the hot well. Here the caproic, caprylic and capric acids dissolved in the warm water and these dissolved acids ultimately found their way to the plant effluent stream where they contributed to the biochemical oxygen demand loading. Early in 1969 a Croll-Reynolds Scrub-Vactor was placed in operation to remove fatty acids from the vapors leaving the still. A normal scrubber installation could not be employed because of the volatility of the lights, but a modification was devised in which coconut oil low in free fatty acids is sprayed into the scrubber. The coconut oil is removed continuously at such a rate that the free fatty acids content of the oil does not build up to over 10% to 15%. This material then goes to the fat splitter. By this means 80% of more of the fatty acids are removed from the vapor stream with resulting reduction in polution of plant aqueous effluent and collection of salable fatty acid lights.