M.Ghisellini

Oleochemistry: the basics and a general overview.

Oleochemistry is the organic chemistry based on animal fats and vegetable oils. Hence, it is a renewable organic chemistry, contrarily to petrochemistry, which is based on mineral oil, and therefore represents a form of non renewable production.

The oleochemical products and their derivatives are used for the manufacturing of almost every object of our daily life: rubber, plastics, lubricants, tyres, automotive parts, paintings, cosmetics, detergents, soaps, aluminium containers and many more.

The main raw materials used in the oleochamical industry are animal fats, particularly bovine fat (tallow) and swine fat (lard), and vegetable oils, mainly palm oil, palm kernel oil, coconut oil, soyabean oil, rapeseed oil, sunflower oil. Often also by-products are used: UCO (used cooking oil) and acid oils from oil refination.

The basic oleochamical products are fatty acids, glycerine, fatty alcohols and methylesters (biodiesel).

The most important derivatives are esters, soaps, esterquats, alcohol ethoxylates, polyglycerols.

The production of oleochemicals involves several processes: hydrolitic splitting, straight and fractional distillations, hydrogenation, wet separation, ethoxylation, esterification, saponification, evaporation, flaking and prilling.

The global oleochemical market size (excluding food and feed applications) is 20-30 millions of tons per year. The main players are located in South East Asia, mostly in Indonesia and Malaysia, because of the abundance of palm oil. Europe is another important market, fragmented in several medium size producers, and it is largely based on animal raw materials.

Oleochemistry can play a very important role in the development of the so called bio-based and circular economy.