Fatty Acid Methyl Ester and Its Relative Products from Palm Oil

抄録

There has been a tendency towards a gradual changing of raw materials in the detergent industry from petrochemicals to vegetable oils. One major advantage of vegetable oils is that they are renewable resources and friendly to the environment.
   Palm oil has been worthy of special attention because of satisfactory yields and suitable carbon chain distributions for various kinds of surfactants such as alpha sulfo fatty acid methyl ester (MES), and so on. Another advantage of palm oil is that crude palm oil contains useful minor components.
   Specifically, palm carotene has attracted the attention of many researchers, because which is composed of carotene isomers and which content is about 10 times higher than that of carrots.
   Generally, most oleochemical products are produced through fatty acid or fatty acid methylester. Fatty acid is still a major oleochemical product, however the growth of production amounts of fatty acid methylester is greater than that of fatty acid from a view point of energy consumption.
   In this paper, new oleochemical streams based on fatty acid methylester derived from palm oil are discussed. These methylesters are raw materials for various surfactants, such as MES, soap, alcohol sulfate, alcohol ethoxylate, cationic surfactant and so on.
   Besides the extraction process of natural carotenes from palm oil, using a phase equilibrium of palm methylester, methanol, and water, has been commercially successful.
   Palm oil, palm kernel oil, and coconuts oil will play important roles in the 21st centuries.