AVALIAÇÃO DA EXTRAÇÃO DE ÓLEO DE DENDÊ POR PRENSAGEM HIDRÁULICA NA COMUNIDADE DO LIMOEIRO, ACRE - BRASIL

Abstract

The recent study aims to evaluate the palm oil yield of a sample of a universe of 170 palm trees (Elaeis guineensis) cultivated at small community known as Limoeiro, geographically located in proximity of Rio Branco capital the state of Acre. The oil was obtained by hydraulic extraction of the variety of mature clusters collected among the bunches. Afterwards the collected fruits then were exposed to different temperatures just before go through hydraulic extraction as following. E1 – No temperature was applied; E2 – clusters in water at temperature of 80°C for 30 minutes; E3 – clusters in water at temperature of 80°C for 60 minutes. The extractions were performed by triplicates and the yield was calculated based on the measured masses. The quality of the palm oil was evaluated using the specific mass (SM), acidity index (AI) and saponification index (SI). The results concluded that, best production efficiency and oil quality was obtained at E2 (yield 19.3% and AI = 3.00 mg KOH/g), indicating the need of cooking the fruits at controlled temperature and time, despite of the results acquired from E1 and E3. Compared to previous research, according to literature, the results obtained from yielding capacity and oil quality at the community Limoeiro, reached satisfactory results.