Fatty Acid Distillation

A. Straight Distillation

Fatty acids segregated from splitting plants are crude and contain 2 to 5 % of glycerides, oligomers, and oxidation products. A Fatty Acid Distillation Plant typically maintains 160 – 250 degrees Celsius with a pressure of 2 to 20 milli bars. The product (fatty acids) they produce are of light hues and contain resides. The light ends are cooled, condensed, and passed on for further processing and eventual discarding.

The residual matter produced because of the continuous distillation process contains a certain amount of fatty acid and may be put to use for low quality productions or re-hydrolysed and redistilled in batches. These fatty acid distillation plants or towers can produce several fractions of fatty acids based on their differing vapour pressures. They can also be fractionated by low temperature partial crystallization.

Highlights:

The fatty acids are fractionated in fractionation columns having structured packing which allows high separation efficiency and low pressure drop. Falling films are provided to gently evaporate the liquid phase and vapors are condensed in a surface condenser. The operation depends on the feed composition or is based on the origin of raw material and the product fractions composition or purity. Fractional Distillation facilitates the separation of Fatty Acid mixtures into composite cuts or even individual components. The fatty acids are fractionated in vacuum columns having structured packing which allow high separation efficiency and low pressure drop. Falling film are provided to gently evaporate the liquid phase and vapours are condensed in surface condenser. The operation depend on the particular fractionation separation. Crude fatty acids is dried, degassed and then evaporated in fractionation column 1 under a residual vacuum. Fraction 1 is take out from the column top. The bottom product of column 1 is transferred to the feed point of column 2 and evaporated under vacuum. The surface condenser of column 2 is for heat recovery by steam generation fallowed by a final condenser.

Benefits of fostechno supplied plants.

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