The recovery of used palm cooking oil using bagasse as adsorbent.

The used of bagasse as adsorbent is a new approach which is not common or apparent. Bagasse is in abundance, easily available and if not used it may led to waste. Bagasse adsorbent may reduce solid waste disposal, and hence reducing one of environmental pollution. This study was undertaken to explore the possibility of using bagasse as adsorbent to recover used cooking oil.Specifically , bagasse is being tested to reduce the degredation content such as Free Fatty Acid (FFA), Peroxide Value(PV), saponification value and colour density in used cooking oil.Variotion of adsorbent weight and contact time are used as parameters to determine the effective time and amount of adsorbent that should be used in the oil recovery process. Analysis of FPA, PV and saponification value was done using titration method (AOCS), 2009) while colour analysis was done using spectrophotometer. From the experiment conducted, it can be established that bagasse adsorbent can reduce FFA to 82.14% which is lower than the harmful limit.This result is obtained when using 7.5 gram of bagasse for 60 minutes contact time.Similarly, the colour of oil is reduced significantly to 75.67% using 10 gram of bagasse for 60 minutes of contact time. The highest of PV is 21% using 7.5 gram bagasse for 10 minute contact time. Saponification values for all the variation of time and weight are reduced about 194-210. Hence all the values are in the range of saponification value recommendation from World Health Organization (WHO). The optimun condition for the recovery process is when the contact time of purification process is 60 minutes and 10 gram of adsorbent weight. The Freundlich and Langmuir isotherm are used to study the mechanism of bagasse adsorption.Bagasse as a natural adsorbent is a viable alternative and can compete with the commercial adsorbent to recover used cooking oil.