PALM KERNEL NUT & SHELL

 

Product Description: The Oil Palm tree is one of the greatest economic assets a state or nation has, provided its importance is realized and potentials fully harnessed. Oil Palm products include Palm Oil, Palm Kernel Oil, and Palm Kernel Cake amongst other products. These can further be processed into RBD OLEIN (Cooking Oil), Vegetable Ghee, Shortenings, Margarine, CBS. CBE, Ice Cream, Dough, Creaming, Coating, and other specialty fats. Some other by-products of the Oil Palm include Palm wine, fatty alcohols as well as intermediates. Nature so made it that all aspects of the Oil palm tree are useful and economically viable.

“Oils” is a collective term for more or less viscous, generally organic-chemical liquids. Depending on their chemical composition, a distinction may be drawn between fatty, essential, mineral and silicone oils. Fatty oils include liquid, semisolid and solid products of vegetable and animal origin. They are also known as sweet oils.

Palm kernel oil is a white to yellowish oil of vegetable origin which is solid at normal temperatures and is obtained from the kernels of the oil palm (Elaeis guineensis). It is one of the best oils. Palm kernel oil is different from palm oil, which is obtained from the flesh of the fruit. Four {4} products namely palm kernel oil,palm kernel cake,palm kernel sludge and palm kernel shell {crushed} which is used as a biofuel can be gotten from palm kernel nuts.
Palm kernel oil is processed to yield edible fats, soaps and candles and is used in the confectionery, pharmaceutical and perfume industries.

Location, Availability and Production of Palm Kernel Nuts and Oil:
Palm kernel nut is a by-product from the milling of palm oil and can be sourced from oil palm plantation scattered in the rain forest region in southern Nigeria. The nuts can be sourced bit by bit from farmers after extracting the oil from the fruits in villages or from palm oil producing companies. The product is usually available in large quantity during raining season from May to September and extends to December.

It is important at this point to note that in the production of palm kernel nuts, we have the hand and machine cracked. The hand cracked palm kernel nuts are those gotten by the use of hand while the machine cracked is that gotten from the use of machine in the cracking process.

Though buyers usually prefer the hand cracked because the FFA {Free Fatty Acid} content is usually low due to less breakage of the nuts but cannot depend only on it due to less output. Machine cracked with the advantage of more output gives high FFA content which can be controlled by reducing the breakage of nuts. The machine in question has an efficiency of 90%, that is, if 100 KG of palm kernel {unshelled} is feed into the machine, 90% of the palm kernel nut would not be broken.

The machine we used for the production of palm kernel nuts are two types, the ones that can crack and separate the nuts from the shell and the other that does not separate the nuts from the cracked shell.

Below are the pictures of our palm kernel shell