Bob Wilfrid Loumouamou^{1, 2,}, Eliane Thérèse Biassala¹, Célestine Kiminou Ngounga^{1, 3}, Anicet Frédéric Binaki^{1, 2}, Eldride Grace Divine Ngabé², Jean Mathurin Nzikou², Christian Feueltgaldah Bopoundza¹

The aim of this study was to investigate the kinetics and thermodynamic properties of thermal bleaching of Raphia sese oil. The effectiveness of temperature in bleaching Raphia sese oil was investigated in this work. The result suggests that increasing temperature increases the bleaching rate of the oil. Two models were used to conduct the kinetic study of oil bleaching, the pseudo-first order and the pseudo-second order. The study revealed that pseudo-second-order is the kinetic model that effectively describes the experimental data of the Raphia sese oil bleaching process with rate constant values equal to 5.2548.10^-4, 6.1065.10^-4 and 6.7170.10^-4 g/mg.min respectively for temperatures of 150, 180 and 210°C. The model fits better as heating temperature increases. Thermodynamic properties were evaluated using parameters such as free energy variation (∆G⁰), enthalpy variation (∆H⁰) and entropy variation (∆S⁰). The enthalpy, entropy and activation energy were determined to be 875.10^-3 kJ/mol, -244.10^-3 kJ/mol and 2.505 kJ respectively. The free energy ranged from 104.274 to 118.940 kJ/mol. The result indicates that a bleaching rate of up to 96% can be achieved with a temperature of 210°C for an oven heating time of 7 h, i.e. 420 min.

kinetics, thermodynamics, thermal bleaching, Raphia sese oil