JAKARTA – Products of personal care, beauty, cosmetics, and cleaning are the most popular ones among global consumers, including those in Indonesia. One of the raw materials used to produce the personal care products is sucrose ester. It is a product of downstream palm oil industries, which is ecofriendly, non-toxic, biocompatible with various kinds of industrial raw materials, and biodegradable.
As the world’s largest producer of palm oil, Indonesia has a big opportunity to produce raw materials from the processing of palm oil. Such products are expected to increase the added value of Indonesia’s downstream palm oil products.
For such purpose, a research team of Bogor University of Agriculture (IPB University) led by Prof. Dr. Erliza Hambali, conducted a research on sucrose ester oleo-chemistry as the raw material for products of personal care, cosmetics and cleaning.
The result of the research, which is financially supported by the oil palm plantation fund management board (BPDPKS), is reported in the book of Grant Riset Sawit 2023 under the title “The development of Production Process of Sucrosa Ester Oleo-chemistry from palm methyl ester and its applications on products of personal care, cosmetics, and cleaning.
The research was started with the process of esterification of fatty acids by using 98% H2SO4 catalyst and varying amount of catalyst between 1.5 – 3% and mole ratio of reactants between 1:5 – 1:8. The extraction rate of methyl ester derived from the process varies between 87 – 98%.
The derived methyl ester has a specification of density at 0.85 – 0.87 g/cm3, viscosity 2.3 – 5.35 cP, acid content at 0.001 – 3.480 mg KOH/g sample, saponification composition at 192 – 231 mg KOH/g sample, iodine composition 1.05 – 103.41 g Iod/100 g sample, total glycerol 0.008 – 0.066 %-mass, free glycerol 0.004 – 0.042 %-mass, ester composition 95.3 – 99.9 %-mass and water content 0.08 – 0.2%.
From the process, the analysis of sucrosa ester resulted in pH 10 – 12, foam stability 0 – 88%, emultion stability 21 – 78%, surface tension 24 – 33 dyne/cm, interfacial tension 3 – 17 dyne/cm, contact angle 14 – 89°, droplet size 1.6 – 14.6 μ and extraction rate 29 – 59%. The result shows that the use of K2CO3 catalyst on the synthesis process of sucrosa ester from palm fatty acid methyl ester is better compared to Na2CO3 catalyst.
Besides, the reactor design for sucrolysis process at scale of 5 L/batch managed to be developed based on the best process condition of the sucrose ester synthesis from various kinds of palm fatty acid methyl ester. The dimension of the resulting sucrolysis reactor has a diameter of 16.5 cm, height 33 cm made from SS 304, pressure 1 bar and operating temperature 150 oC.
The FTIR analysis of derived sucrosa ester product shows clusters of C=O emerged at the wave composition of 1.744 cm-1, clusters of C-H and CH2 emerged at the wave composition of 2.924 cm-1.
Currently, the research team is seeking a partnership for further development of their research toward pilot and commercial scale. (*)
