Solvent refining of cottonseed oil

The refining of cottonseed oil by selective extraction of free fatty acids using methanol, ethanol, n. propanol, isopropanol, n. butanol and acetonitril has been investigated. On the basis of the equilibrium composition of the oil and solvent phases, the selectivities of the different solvents to extract the fatty acids in preference to the neutral lipids were estimated. It was found that 90% methanol, 90% ethanol and 90% acetonitril are the most selective among the solvents tried. Ethanol is advantageous over the two other solvents in view of its capacity to dissolve more fatty acids using same volume of solvent. The selectivity of each of the different solvents to extract the oil pigments together with the fatty acids has been also determined and compared. Ethanol, the most selective solvent to extract the fatty acids was found also to be the most selective to extract the oil pigments

Comparison between sulfuric acid catalyst and some other oxirane cleavage catalysts

The effect of sulfuric acid as a catalyst on the rate of oxirane ring opening in epoxidized soybean oil in presence of glacial acetic acid has been studied and compared with p-toluene sulforic acid. Duolite C 26 and Lewatit S 100 cation resin catalysts. It has been proved that sulfuric acid has the strongest catalytic effect on the cleavage reaction. The matrix structure of the resin catalyst was claimed to be one of the most important rate-controlling variables. The use of Duolite; a macroporous resin, at a level of 10% of the weight of the aqueous phase resulted in an increase of the reaction rate constant by 70% compared to 35% using 10% Lewatit, a gel type resin. This results suggests that the cleavage reaction catalyzed by resin catalysts is determined by the degree of cross linking and porosity rather than the number of active sites