Fat splitting

Fat splitting, particularly the continuous, high pressure, countercurrent hydrolysis of fats and oils, typified by the Colgate-Emery or modified processes, represents the technological cornerstone for today’s American fatty acid industry. Internationally, other methods such as Twitchell or batch autoclave “medium-pressure” catalyzed or uncatalyzed splitting are still important. All industrial fat splitting methods have as their objectives the attainment of a high rate of hydrolysis together with a high degree of completeness. This objective is achieved, more or less, by the proper optimum balance of: (a) use of excess water; (b) selection of appropriate combination of temperature and pressure to optimize the solubility of liquid water in the fat phases with or without use of suitable “water-in-oil” emulsifiers; (c) use or nonuse of acidic catalyst (rarely basic catalysts); and (d) removal of byproduct glycerol. Significant conditions and details in fat splitting by the important commercial processes are described.