Decolourisation of Palm Oil

As the second largest edible vegetable oil in the world, palm oil plays an important role in cooking and food production. However, crude palm oil contains various colloidal impurities, pigments and odorous substances. While some of these substances can be harmful to human health, others affect the quality of the palm oil and must be removed before refining.

The typical refining process of palm oil usually involves physical refining. The main process flow is as follows: Crude palm oil → degumming → deacidification → decolourisation → deodorisation → refined palm oil. The purpose of palm oil refining is to remove various impurities from the crude palm oil. After the deodorisation process, the impurities in the crude palm oil are removed and refined palm oil is obtained.

Among these processes, decolourisation is a critical stage of the palm oil refining process and also an important factor in determining the cost and quality of palm oil refining. Nowadays, among the decolourisation methods, the palm oil decolourisation method is considered the most effective. This method uses a combination of activated carbon and activated clay to promote decolourisation and purify the oil.

Activated carbon can effectively remove macromolecules that clay cannot adsorb, especially polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. The particularly strong adsorption effect of activated carbon makes it effective for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. This means that the oil filtered with activated carbon does not contain any polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.

Worldwide, the palm oil refinery has great market opportunities in the Southeast Asian countries, which are important palm oil producers. The import volume of around 3.6 million tonnes per year shows that the demand for decolourising clay and activated carbon is high.

For further details and product offers as well as technical support, please do not hesitate to contact us.