Palm oil is an important product in the Malaysian economy. In most applications, foods and non-foods, refined and/or fractionated palm oil products are utilized. Crude palm oil contains a small amount of nutritionally valuable phytochemicals, including vitamin E (tocopherol and tocotrienol), phytosterols and squalene. During the process of palm oil refining, palm fatty acid distillate […]

Squalene is a minor constituent of oils and fats. It is a triterpenoid aliphatic hydrocarbon with six unconjugated double bonds (Figure 1), first discovered in shark liver oil in 1906 by Mitsumaru Tsujimoto. It is present in human tissue and plant oils in small amounts. Squalene is a valuable commercial product and traditionally produced from […]

Oil palm industries generate at least 30 million tonnes of lignocellulosic biomass annually in the form of oil palm trunks (OPT), empty fruit bunches (EFB), oil palm fronds (OPF) and palm pressed fibres (PPF). At present, the biomass is either left to rot in the plantations to provide organic nutrients to the oil palm trees […]

Lignin is a phenolic polymeric complex that attaches with cellulose and hemicellulose. Whereas, cellulose is a linear polymer of glucose (six carbon sugar) and hemicellulose is a branched polymer of xylose (five carbon sugar). Extraction of these components from lignocellulosic materials, with minimal waste by-products and with environmentally friendly process, has to be taken into […]

Palm heart or umbut has become an exotic mass product mainly used as a salad ingredient in Europe. Normally, the source of palm heart is from coconut tree, but now the palm heart can be collected from oil palm tree. Oil palm hearts are slender, ivory-coloured, delicately flavoured and quite expensive. However, its quality deteriorates […]