Rupture curves for oleic acid adsorption on ion exchange resin

• Grant number: 06/07006-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: March 01, 2007
• End date: August 31, 2008
• Field of knowledge: Agronomical Sciences - Food Science and Technology
• Principal Investigator: Antonio José de Almeida Meirelles
• Grantee: Natália Pires Macedo
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Engenharia de Alimentos (FEA). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Some vegetal oils present in its composition substances with high nutritional value. These oils can present problems when being submitted the physical or chemical refining, which can cause great losses of neutral oil and in the nutritional value during the process, as it occurs, for example, with the rice oil. The liquid-liquid extraction or extraction with solvent represents one alternative technique of oil desacidification, with the advantages to operate in low temperatures and to minimize the losses of oil and nutritional composites. In the liquid-liquid extraction process appear 2 currents of exit, the refined (rich in oil) and the extract (rich in solvent); being the last one the only disadvantage of the process, because this current need to be treated. The solvent used in the process must be recovered to use it again, in particular the solvent that it is in the extract current. Ion exchange resins (AMBERLYST A26 OH) can be used as complement of the liquid-liquid extraction, making the separation of minority components of this extraction, as acid greasy and the nutritional components, and recovery the solvent. The ion exchange resins come being used in many segments of the industry, being that the adsorption processes are generally carried through flowing off the fluid continuously for the column packed with adsorbent. In this way the study of the dynamics of adsorption columns in fixed stream bed becomes important. This project has as objective to get curves of breakthrough for model systems (propanol + oleic acid) using experimental design 22 in columns of ion exchange resin (AMBERLYST A26 OH). In this project will be studied the behavior of columns of ion exchange resins in remove the oleic acid from model system that simulates the extract current of liquid-liquid extraction. The effect of the studied variable, temperature and acidity, in the removal of oleic acid by the column of resin will be analyzed on the basis of response surface, obtained by the experimental study. Also it will be possible to verify the capacity of the column of ion exchange resin to remove acidity. From the experiments with model systems, the best conditions will be defined to be used in a complex system involving, propanol + oleic acid + rice oil. The accomplishment of this project of scientific initiation will count on the contribution of the PhD student Érika Cren, which carried through her study on the subject of the use of ion exchange resin in the processing of solvent greasy. (AU)