Evaluasi Kuantitas Dan Kualitas Produk Katalis Heterogen Hasil Pemanfaatan Tandan Kosong Kelapa Sawit Melalui Impregnasi Logam Transisi

Abstract

Oil Palm Empty Fruit Bunches (EFB) are solid wastes produced from the processing of Fresh Fruit Bunches (FFB) into crude palm oil, which is has large of quantity, reaching 30-35% of the total Fresh Fruit Bunches. This large quantity represent potential benefit with proper utilisized. One of the uses of Oil Palm Empty Fruit Bunches is as a solid catalyst which function is to catalyze the esterification process. Oil Palm Empty Fruit Bunches catalyst is a solid acid catalyst synthesized through a direct impregnation method with the transition metal Mn. The synthesis of catalyst goes through several stages i.e.: pretreatment, impregnation and calcination. The performance of catalyst was tested in the esterification process of palm oil with high free fatty acid values. The quantity evaluation of solid acid catalyst from Oil Palm Empty Fruit Bunches was carried out in the form of yield of the catalyst produced and the the quality evaluation was carried out in the form of catalyst performance in reducing free fatty acid levels. The evaluation were carried out for two variations of pretreatment, namely pretreatment 1 (pretreatment using NaOH) and pretreatment 2 (pretreatment using NaOH and Na2S). The highest yield was obtained from the pretreatment process with NaOH with an average amount of 234.65% of the weight of dry EFB raw material before impregnation. And for the quality evaluation results, it was found that the pretreatment catalyst with NaOH could reduce free fatty acids with the highest percentage, namely 83.87%.