The evening talk will now take place on Monday 29 June 2020. (rev 04 June 2020)

Overview

The Truth About Oil Palm

Today, palm oil accounts for 34% of the worlds’ vegetable oil production, with Malaysia contributing 39% of the world’s palm oil production. Being one of the major palm oil producers and exporters in the world, Malaysia plays an important role in fulfilling the needs of the growing global market as the world’s population is growing rapidly.

The oil palm tree is the most efficient crop as it produces 3.8 tonnes of palm oil per hectare of land as compared to rapeseed, sunflower and soybean oil with efficiency of 0.8, 0.7 and 0.5 tonnes of oil per hectare of land respectively. The oil palm utilizes the lowest harvesting area of 7% (20 million hectares) as compared to the total oilseed land area in the world of 289 million hectares.

In terms of total world agricultural land, oil palm utilises only a meagre 0.5% of the land area as compared to 4.2 billion hectares used for agriculture in total. In addition to this, palm oil contains almost 50% unsaturated fatty acids and the remaining is saturated fatty acids where it is used as an alternative to trans-fats. This non-genetic modified oil is also rich in antioxidants and used widely in various food and non-food products.

Lately however, the oil palm industry has been accused to be unsustainable, causing major deforestation and killing of the Orang Utan and palm oil has also been linked to causing health related problems by certain quarters of the public, which led to banning of palm oil by the European Union. Hence, it is a crucial time now to spread the truth about palm oil by creating awareness to shift public’s perception based on actual facts of palm oil.

Palm Oil Milling Initiatives

Oil Extraction Rate (OER) has hit a plateau in the oil palm industry due to several reasons such as inconsistency of fresh fruit bunches (FFB) quality received at the palm oil mills and due to the use of conventional machinery for production of crude palm oil which has reached its limit pertaining to oil recovery. Generally, the majority of the oil is located in the vacuoles of the plant cells as free oil and dispersed into the cytoplasm within the mesocarp of the oil palm tissue.

The current oil extraction process at mills is carried out by mechanically extracting it from sterilised and digested fruitlets. However, mechanical methods have reached the limitations on further improvement of the OER. Several technologies have been approached to enhance oil recovery via biological treatment, oil enhancer and process modification.

Speaker

Nik Suhaimi Mat Hassan

Nik Suhaimi Mat Hassan is currently a Chief Engineer at Sime Darby Research. He graduated in Chemical & Processing (B Engineering and MSc) from Universitiy Kebangsaan Malaysia. He has been working for more than 16 years in Research and Development field. His work focuses on oil mill process improvement, particularly on process improvement, product quality enhancement and new product development. He is tasked to provide technical supports for mills on technology evaluation, assessment, advisory and troubleshooting works.

He has vast experience in conducting researches and transforming laboratory test into pilot and commercial scales. His interdisciplinary skills resulted in few successful commercialisations of in-house developed processes, where he involved in the plant process design as well as mechanical design. He contributed 6 patents on palm oil mill process improvement. His outstanding and inventive research knowledge in engineering resulted in commercialization of internal developed processes.

In 2019, he won IChemE Malaysia Award 2019 for both categories; Sustainability and Palm Oil for Oil Recovery Enhancement using Cell Wall Degrading Enzymes in Palm Oil Extraction Process and represent Malaysia for Global IChemE Award 2019 in Hull, UK. This year, he and his team received Best New Patent Filing for 2018 Award for Innovation Day 2019 by Sime Darby Plantation.

The material presented has not been peer-reviewed. Any opinions are the presenter’s own and do not necessarily represent those of IChemE or the Palm Oil Processing Special Interest Group. The information is given in good faith but without any liability on the part of IChemE.