Crude pal oil (CPO) is produced in palm oil mills by squeezing the oil out from the digested mesocarp of the palm fruits. The current practice at all the palm oil mills in Malaysia is to use mechanical screw presses to squeeze out the oil from the mesocarp. However, mechanical methods have their limitations as some oil will still remain in the mesocarp even after high pressure mechanical squeezing. The pressed mesocarp fibre retains about 5.0%-8.0% oil as a ratio to dry matter which translates to an oil loss per tonne of fresh fruit bunchers (FFB) in the range of 0.245-0.38% at an average moisture content of 34% in the pressed mesocarp fibre.

Main Research: Vijaya Subramaniam