A novel green process on the purification of crude Jatropha oil with large permeate flux enhancement

Traditional oil purification process has some drawbacks, such as high energy cost, high chemicals demand and the loss of neutral oil. In this study, for the first time, an alternative process was introduced, which combines microfiltration (MF) pretreatment for oil dewaxing and ultrafiltration (UF) purification process for phospholipid removal. More energy and chemicals can be saved by these processes without the loss of neutral oil. It was found that crude Jatropha oil after MF pretreatment shows a higher permeate flux than the degummed Jatropha oil does. After combining two-step membrane filtration process, the physical properties of crude Jatropha oil were greatly improved. The kinematic viscosity was decreased from 28 mm2/s to 25 mm2/s, while carbon residue was also reduced from 5.5 wt% to 2.9 wt%. The newly developed two-step membrane filtration process in this study can be effectively applied for the purification of crude Jatropha oil used for biofuels.