This paper examines the processing steps of extracting palm oil from fresh fruit bunches in a way that may impact on the formation of chloropropandiol fatty esters (3-MCPD esters), particularly during refining. Diacylglycerols (DAGs) do not appear to be a critical factor when crude palm oils are extracted from various qualities of fruit bunches. Highly hydrolysed oils, in spite of the high free fatty acid (FFA) contents, did not show exceptionally high DAGs, and the oils did not display a higher formation of 3-MCPD esters upon heat treatment. However, acidity measured in terms of pH appears to have a strong impact on 3-MCPD ester formation in the crude oil when heated at high temperatures. The differences in the extraction process of crude palm oil from current commercial processes and that from a modified experimental process showed clearly the effect of acidity of the oil on the formation of 3-MCPD esters. This paper concludes that the washing or dilution step in palm oil mills removes the acidity of the vegetative materials and that a well-optimised dilution/washing step in the extraction process will play an important role in reducing formation of 3-MCPD esters in crude palm oil upon further heat processing.
This study was conducted to investigate on the effect of different sampling regions of palm-refined oils and fats on the 2- and 3-monochloropropanediol fatty acid esters (MCPDE) and glycidol fatty acid esters (GE) levels. The American Oil Chemists' Society (AOCS) Official Method Cd 29a-13 on the determination of MCPDE and GE in edible oils and fats by acid transesterification was successfully verified and optimised, with slight modification using 7890A Agilent GC system equipped with 5975C quadrupole detector. The determined limits of detection (LOD) for MCPDE were 0.02 mg kg-1 and 0.05 mg kg-1 for GE. The method performance has showed good recovery between 80% and 120% for all pertinent compounds with seven replicates assayed in three separate days. Round robin test with two European laboratories, i.e. Eurofins and SGS, has shown compliance results with those of the present study. Among the sampling regions, only one refinery located in the central region of Malaysia showed a significant increment of the MCPDE and GE levels after refining process. The GE level averaging at 2.5 mg kg-1 was slightly higher than that of 3-MCPDE averaging at 1.3 mg kg-1. Both esters were preferentially partitioned into the liquid phase rather than the solid phase after fractionation. However, the overall results exhibited no direct correlation between the esters content and the different sampling locations of the palm oil products in Malaysia. Analysis of total chlorine content also displayed significant variations between sampling locations which clearly show its effect on the chlorine content in the CPO samples.
This study aims to evaluate the influence of Vitamin A and E homologues toward acrylamide in equimolar asparagine-glucose model system. Vitamin A homologue as β-carotene (BC) and five Vitamin E homologues, i.e., α-tocopherol (AT), δ-tocopherol (DT), α-tocotrienol (ATT), γ-tocotrienol (GTT), and δ-tocotrienol (DTT), were tested at different concentrations (1 and 10 µmol) and subjected to heating at 160 °C for 20 min before acrylamide quantification. At lower concentrations (1 µmol; 431, 403, 411 ppm, respectively), AT, DT, and GTT significantly increase acrylamide. Except for DT, enhancing concentration to 10 µmol (5370, 4310, 4250, 3970, and 4110 ppm, respectively) caused significant acrylamide formation. From linear regression model, acrylamide concentration demonstrated significant depreciation over concentration increase in AT (Beta = -83.0, R2 = 0.652, p ≤ 0.05) and DT (Beta = -71.6, R2 = 0.930, p ≤ 0.05). This study indicates that different Vitamin A and E homologue concentrations could determine their functionality either as antioxidants or pro-oxidants.
Esters of 2- and 3-monochloropropanediol (2-MCPDE, 3-MCPDE) and glycidol (GE) are regarded as process contaminants that are found in refined vegetable oils and oil-based foods. Since glycerol is produced during fat splitting, saponification and biodiesel production, it is important to have methods for determining contaminants that might be formed during these processes. Due to the use of glycerol as a food additive, data on the presence of compounds of toxicological concern, including 3-MCPD, are of interest. This study focuses on modifying the indirect analysis of 2-MCPDE, 3-MCPDE and GE using GC-MS based on the AOCS Official Method Cd 29a-13, validating the modified method, and quantifying 2-MCPDE, 3-MCPDE and GE in glycerol. The AOCS Cd 29a-13 method was modified at the initial stage of sample preparation in which the targeted esters were extracted from glycerol by vortex-assisted extraction before sample analysis. This modification was performed based on the polarity of all compounds involved. The calibration functions for all analytes were fitted to linear regression with R2 above 0.99. Limits of detection (LOD) 0.02, 0.01 and 0.02 mg kg-1 were obtained for 2-MCPDE, 3-MCPDE and GE, respectively. Spiked glycerol with 3-MCPDE and 2-MCPDE (0.25, 0.51 and 1.01 mg kg-1) and GE (0.58, 1.16 and 2.32 mg kg-1) were used for recovery and precision measurements. Recoveries of 100-108%, 101-103%, and 93-99% were obtained for 2-MCPDE, 3-MCPDE and GE, respectively. Acceptable precision levels with relative standard deviations ranged from 3.3% to 8.3% were obtained for repeatability and intermediate precision. The validated method was successfully applied for the analysis of the target compounds in refined glycerol from commercial plants, which showed that 2-MCPDE, 3-MCPDE and GE levels in the analysed samples were below the detection limit.