Industrial Skill Development 1.0

A knowledge transfer program between an experienced engineer (En. Ainol Asri bin Imran) and JKPK students. Students were exposed to the basic knowledges of palm oil mill process flow. Program was organized on 20 November 2020 via online session.

In 2020, Malaysia accounted for 25.8% and 34.3% of world’s palm oil production and exports, respectively. If taken into account of other oils & fats produced in the country, Malaysia accounted for 9.1% and 19.7% of the world’s total production and exports of oils and fats in the same year.

Palm oil processing

Research and development work in many disciplines such as biochemistry, chemical and mechanical engineering also the establishment of plantations, which provided the opportunity for large-scale fully mechanized processing, resulted in the evolution of a sequence of processing steps designed to extract, from a harvested oil palm bunch, a high yield of a product of acceptable quality for the international edible oil trade. The oil winning process, in summary, involves the reception of fresh fruit bunches from the plantations, sterilizing and threshing of the bunches to free the palm fruit, mashing the fruit and pressing out the crude palm oil. The crude oil is further treated to purify and dry it for storage and export.

Conversion of crude palm oil to refined oil involves removal of the products of hydrolysis and oxidation. After refining, the oil may be separated (fractionated) into liquid and solid phases by thermo-mechanical means (controlled cooling, crystallization, and filtering), and the liquid fraction (olein) is used extensively as a liquid cooking oil in tropical climates, competing successfully with the more expensive groundnut, corn, and sunflower oils.