Fractionation - Process description

4.3.1 General Process flow

First, the feed oil will be preheated before entering the crystallizer to destroy all crystal memories. The oil will be cooled in the crystallizer according to the preset cooling profile depending on the feed oil quality and product quality required. For palm kernel oil fractionation, the crystallization section consists of two steps; dynamic crystallization and static crystallization. Dynamic crystallization process is performed in a crystallizer to initiate the nucleation while the static crystallization is performed in a statoliaser for cake forming. On the other hand, palm oil fractionation only has one crystallizer which is dynamic crystallizer. After crystallization, the slurries will be sent to membrane filter press to separate the olein (liquid fraction) and stearin (solid fraction). The schematic representation of the process is shown in below