ABSTRACT
Palm Oil was extracted by boiling and digesting the Oil Palm fruits, pressing the mash and finally clarifying the pulp extract by heating. This study aimed at investigating how duration of boiling Oil Palm fruits, screen pore sizes and pulp extract heating influence yield and quality of manually extracted Palm oil. The yield of crude oil increased with increase of duration of boiling of fruits from 25 to 50 minutes and press pore size of 3 to 6 mm, followed by a drop in the yield as the duration of boiling was increased from 75 and 100 minutes. Similarly, there was a drop in oil yield as the pore size was increased to 9 and 12 mm. The quality of clarified oil increased as duration of boiling increased from 5 to 25 minutes. The maximum crude oil yield was achieved at 50 minutes of boiling the fruits and screen pore diameter of 6 mm; while optimum clarification was achieved when the pulp extract was heated for 25 minutes. Therefore, it is appropriate to boil Oil Palm fruits for 50 minutes, use press cages of 6 mm pore diameter and heat pulp extract for 25 minutes for optimum extraction and clarification of Palm oil. A control experiment was conducted where oil was extracted using Hexane solvent; the oil yield was 23.2 % of weight of fruits and the density of the extracted oil were 0.812 grams per cubic centimeter. The results of the study will be useful when designing the equipment and system for processing Palm Oil since there is some data on the press pore size, duration of boiling fruits and pulp extract that give optimum yield. The study has also given some data on palm oil extraction rates that can be used to assess performance of either palm oil processing equipment or a system.
