Oil extraction rate performance study by removing stalk of oil palm Fresh Fruit Bunch (FFB) / Mohamad Firdaus Mohamad Jamudin

Stalk of bunch consist of about 20 percent of the bunch weight and cause some problem in the processing of the oil palm bunches such as absorption of oil and affected the oil in bunch ratio since the amount of oil processed divided by weight of bunch. This study was carried out to study the performance of oil to bunch ratio based on the different sizes of bunch (small, medium, and large) by removing the stalk. In order to increase the oil to bunch ratio, the stalk was removed to reduce the weight of bunch and the oil to bunch ratio of the bunch was examined. Only ripe fresh fruit bunches (FFB) were selected with three ranges of weight; large (more than 15 kg), medium (14.9-10.0 kg), and small (9.9-5.0 kg). The treatments of this study were replicated by three times and Paired T-Test was used as an experimental design of the study to compare the oil in bunch ratio between two treatments. From the study, it was found that the oil in bunch ratio of the stalk removed bunch in all sizes were higher than the oil in bunch ratio of the stalk intact bunch with significant difference of 0.01 at the a-level of 0.05. Small size of stalk removed bunch was highly significant different of the oil in bunch ratio compared to the other sizes with mean 34.573. For the destalking operation, it was found that the large bunch took longer time with 176.67 seconds for removing the stalk compared to the other sizes. The diameter of the stalk was one of the factors influenced the time of destalking operation with large bunch has 7.07cm diameter, followed by medium bunch (6.53cm) and small bunch (5.63cm). It can be concluded the destalking of the bunch can increased the oil in bunch ratio due to the reduced weight of processed bunch.