Recovery of oil and carotenes from palm oil mill effluent (POME)

Abstract

Recovery of oil and carotenes from palm oil mill effluent (POME) was investigated in this paper. Solvent extraction was used to recover the residual oil from POME on a batch basis and silica-based resin was used in the column chromatography to separate the carotenes from the recovered oil. Residual oil extracted from POME in this study was 1710 mg/L by using petroleum ether and 3280 mg/L by using n-hexane in a single stage of solvent extraction. The carotene content in it was about 400 ppm. Carotenes from the recovered oil was then separated to α-carotene and β-carotene at a concentration of about 1450 ppm by column chromatography. The major components of recovered oil from POME were similar to the crude palm oil, which contained mainly α-carotene and β-carotene.