PROCESS INTENSIFICATION OF MEMBRANE SYSTEM FOR CRUDE PALM OIL PRETREATMENT

In the study conventional refining, microfiltration and ultrafiltration processes have been used experimentally to pretreat crude palm oil (CPO) samples with the aim of moving from the usual huge refinery plant to a more process integrated membrane module at ultrascale size that will even perform better than the former. Reduction of phosphorus for the membrane‐permeate of 43.4% was higher than that of bleached oil of 34.4%. When ceramic membranes with pore diameters of 0.45 µm and 0.2 µm were used in microfiltration, it was found that membrane with pore size of 0.45 µm was able to reject 14% of phosphorus, while ceramic membrane with pore size of 0.2 µm showed better phosphorus rejection of 56.8%. Upon applying ceramic membrane with pore sizes of 20 nm and 50 nm, 78.1% and 60% of phosphorus were rejected, respectively. Attributed to the superior performance of the membrane with 20 nm pore size over other membranes and conventional refining method on phosphorus content, a simulation study thus made, showed that the average slurry volume after about 22‐min runs for membrane with pore sizes of 0.45 µm, 0.2 µm, 50 nm and 20 nm, and the average slurry volumes are 0.05, 0.09, 0.13 and 0.18 m ³ , respectively. The percentage decrease between membrane pore size of 0.45 µm and 0.2 µm; 0.45 µm and 50 nm; and 0.45 µm and 20 nm are 73, 49 and 24%, respectively. The ultrafiltration achieved order of process miniaturization of about 10 ² ?10 ³ , which is in accordance with literature. This is a considerable size reduction in the process size, which reflects the magnitude of slurry volume that can be produced within a given time and meets every standard for process intensification through simulated process miniaturization.