Coconut oil again?

Palm oil and other vegetable oils have become more popular among Sri Lankan oil consumers during past few decades because of their high availability and low prices. But when quality and health aspect are considered, it can be clearly identified that coconut oil is in well ahead of all other types oils that are in Sri Lankan market.

Health advantages of Coconut oil

• Coconut oil has antiviral, antibacterial, antimicrobial, and antiprotozoal properties and, like all whole foods, contains nutrients for a healthy body.
• Over many decades coconut oil received bad publicity due to its saturated fat content, but research has shown that not all saturated fats are alike and coconut oil is unique in its structural make-up.
• Furthermore around 50% of these MCT‟s are made up of lauric acid, the most important essential fatty acid in building and maintaining the body‟s immune system. Apart from coconut oil, the only other source of lauric acid found in such high concentrations is in mother‟s milk.
• Reducing the consumption of coconut oil and replacing a portion of it with polyunsaturated fats resulted in changes to blood cholesterol levels that are associated with a reduced risk of cardiovascular diseases.
• Coconut oil is composed of a group of unique fat molecules known as medium-chain fatty acids (MCFA). Although they are technically classified as saturated fats, this fat can actually protect you from getting a heart attack or suffering a stroke.
• Coconut oil taken orally was found to be a useful adjunct therapy in children with community-acquired pneumonia.

RBD coconut oil

Even though coconut oil has various varieties, refined bleached and deodorized (RBD) coconut oil is expanding over local and international market rapidly. RBD coconut oil is less in color, odor and also free fatty acids (FFA), since it leads to add a more commercial value to the product. The oil extracting process of a coconut seed should be undergone to various processes rather than peanut oil and other types of oils. Furthermore, when considering the refining of normal coconut oil, more sophisticated and advanced technologies and equipments are required.

Can we manufacture RBD coconut oil economically in Sri Lanka for the local market?

Sri Lanka currently produces around 40000 MT of coconut oil annually. That is around 60 million bottles per year. Therefore Average consumption of coconut oil in Sri Lanka is 3 bottles per person per year. But total oil consumption rate is 15 bottles per person per year. We know people in Sri Lanka have been using coconut oil for a long period of time for their day to day cooking and other purposes because of its quality. But with the arrival of palm oil and other low cost vegetable oils, Coconut oil industry has gone down gradually. Most of the Sri Lankan oil producers do their businesses in smaller scale, therefore it was difficult for them to face the competitiveness of other type of imported oils and stay in the industry. This situation lead to the closure of most of the coconut oil plants in Sri Lanka.

It can be clearly identified that Coconut Extraction is a profitable business if it is done in medium or large scale. Sri Lanka has the perfect environmental conditions for the growth of coconut tree. If sufficient amount of Raw material (Coconut nuts) are available, Coconut oil extraction can be done as a highly profitable business in Sri Lanka.

The Chemical Engineer: Beyond Chemical Engineering

What is “Chemical & Process Engineering”? It's popularly known as “Chemical Engineering”. How is it defined? This question will undoubtedly take the first place in the list of questions that a Chemical Engineer has to answer the most. So what exactly Chemical Engineering is? & what does a Chemical Engineer do?

Answer may not be that simple.

Chemical Engineering is a branch of engineering like all other engineering fields. And it deals with applications of Physical Sciences (e.g. Chemistry & Physics) and Life Sciences (Biology, Microbiology & Bio Chemistry) with Mathematics. So the Chemical Engineer has a very good knowledge in basic principles of Chemistry, Physics, Biology, etc.

Applications of these sciences with Mathematics to the processes of converting Raw Materials into useful products can be basically identified as Chemical Engineering.

What are these applications of sciences that can be put into processes in order to convert Raw Material into valuable products? That is the question which will immediately come next. The answer is simple and quite straight forward. These are called “Unit operations”.

Unit Operations are the basic physical operations of chemical engineering in a chemical process plant, e.g. distillation, evaporation, extraction, drying, crystallization, filtration, mixing, size separation, crushing, grinding, etc. These Unit operations which are developed from the theories of Heat & Mass transfer and Thermodynamics, combine together in a sequence and make the process that produce useful products.

So what does the Chemical Engineer do? Chemical engineer is mainly involved in designing, optimizing and maintaining processes that produce valuable products. He is capable of managing plants in order to accomplish the objective of produce the best for the least cost. In this process, Chemical Engineer concerns highly about Energy usage optimization and the environment impact that occurs with the process.

Therefore modern Chemical Engineer’s job cannot be framed just as process designing, optimizing and maintaining because it goes beyond that. Modern Chemical Engineer is also concern with pioneering valuable new materials and techniques such as Nanotechnology, fuel cells and Bio medical engineering. In addition, the Chemical Engineer requires skills and knowledge in many different areas in the process of doing a profitable business.

Chemical Engineer is mainly working in businesses that produce valuable products for Human being. In businesses, profit always come first therefore the Chemical Engineer should have a good knowledge in Engineering Economics and Marketing field when facing the challenge of producing the best quality marketable products for the lowest cost.

Chemical Engineering processes require Human resource as well as electronic devices and Computer systems in order to run the plant efficiently and conveniently. Chemical Engineer therefore requires good knowledge and skills in Computer and electronic systems and good Leadership & interpersonal skills along with management skills and experience in Human resource management.

Further, the Chemical Engineer requires many techniques for the optimization of plant operation in order to run the plant efficiently and gain higher profit for the company.

The Chemical Engineer as an Entrepreneur

Every big manufacturing company in the world has been developed around some Chemical Engineering process starting with a simple chemical reaction. (E.g. Unilever, Coca Cola) The Chemical Engineer is considered as a combination of a chemist and a Mechanical engineer, who is capable of developing a simple lab scale reaction into a large scale manufacturing plant which ultimately makes a world class business. Therefore the Chemical Engineer having a new business idea with the required knowledge and skills holds a high potential to step into the business world as an entrepreneur.

All these opportunities of a Chemical Engineer show the breadth of the scope of a modern Chemical Engineer beyond Chemical Engineering.