Articles - Chemical Science & Engineering Research

Abstract

Bleaching vegetable oil is one of the ways of removing impurities and pigments in oil for industrial and domestic applications. It is an adsorption process where the particles clog on the adsorbent surface. This work looks at bleaching Palm Oil using Silica Nanoparticle (SiO₂ Nps) approximately 5 nm in size mixed with Polyethylene Glycol (PEG) to form SiO₂ Nps-PEG hydrogel nanocomposite. From the experiment, the diffraction peaks 102, 200, 101, 101, 212, 301, 110, 211, and 123 at Braggs angle 15^o, 17^o, 21^o, 23^o, 26^o, 27^o, 36^o, 39^o and 43^o from X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis, shows that amorphous SiO₂ was formed and peak M specifies the presence of PEG in the SiO₂ Nps-PEG nanocomposite hydrogel. Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) analysis showed a well dispersed SiO₂ in the SiO₂ Nps-PEG hydrogel nanocomposite compared to aggregated SiO₂ Nps without PEG. The SiO₂ Nps-PEG hydrogel effectively bleached raw palm oil indicated by an increase in fatty acids from 86.6% in the unbleached oil to 97.1% in the bleached oil; increase in the aldehydes from 0.67% in the unbleached oil to 0.9% in the bleached oil; decrease in alkanones from 2.79% in the unbleached oil to 0.94% in the bleached oil; decrease in other organics from 9.38% in the unbleached oil to 0.48% in the bleached oil and finally alkene increase from 0.21% to 0.34% as obtained from the Gas Chromatography/Mass Spectrometry (GCMS) analysis. This shows that the SiO₂ Nps-PEG nanocomposite hydrogel is an effective agent in bleaching palm oil.