Reactivated Spent Bleaching Earth as a New Path in Waste Resource Utilization for the Crude Palm Oil Bleaching Process

Department of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universitas Sumatera Utara, Medan, 20155, Indonesia

^* Corresponding author: renita.manurung@usu.ac.id

Abstract

The palm oil refining process usually uses adsorbents. The commonly used adsorbent is Bleaching Earth. However, this raises a new problem: hazardous waste in the refining process, namely Spent Bleaching Earth (SBE). For this reason, one of which is the utilization of SBE as an adsorbent through a reactivation process. This study aims to determine the characterization of RBE produced from the microwave reactivation process and acid solution as an adsorbent in the palm oil (CPO) bleaching process. The SBE reactivation process was carried out using microwaves and sulphate acid solution at concentrations 3N. RBE characteristics were analyzed using Scanning Electron Microscopy - energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM-EDS) and Brunner Emmet Teller (BET) - Barrett-Joyner-Halenda (BJH). The resulting RBE characteristics include surface area, pore volume, and pore size of 436,820 m2/g, 0.544 cc/g, and 2.488 nm, respectively. Patricelli model is more appropriate to use to explain the mechanism of the SBE desorption process using the MAE method with the coefficient of determination value of 0.9931. The palm oil adsorbed using RBE has 10R/20Y/0.9W of color quality, 3.93% free fatty acid number, and 11.61 meq O2/kg peroxide number. In this study, SBE was successfully converted into RBE by microwave reactivation process, and the excellent performance of RBE in palm oil bleaching was verified. This research not only helps to solve the environmental problems in the process of palm oil refining but also provides a new way for waste resource utilization.