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Fat splitting: fatty acids from palm kernel oil

Fat splittingHydrolysisOleochemicalsFatty acids
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Continuous high-pressure countercurrent fat splitting (Colgate-Emery process): triglyceride oil hydrolyzed with excess water at ~260 C / 55 bar to free fatty acids plus glycerol. The databank has no lauric/myristic acid or their triglycerides (palm kernel oil's actual dominant fatty acids), so the feed is modeled as tripalmitin/triolein hydrolyzing to palmitic/oleic acid instead -- the same reaction chemistry and process conditions, a different (available) fatty-acid slate. The real unit gravity-settles the fatty-acid and glycerol-water phases downstream; that decanting step is not modeled here (scope note), so the product stream is the full reactor effluent.

The flowsheet

The solved topology — every unit op's real duty, conversion, or split, read straight off a genuine converged solve.

OIL FEED
Water FEED
MIX
RX1
RX2
Splitter Product

The stream table

Every stream's flow, temperature, pressure, and composition — real converged numbers, not placeholders.

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