I have investigated all day to find out how they bleach palm oil and most important, if that is something I can manage to do at home. Luckily it is, in theory. Several ways. And luckily, scientists have manage to bleach palm oil by 91% using heat and activate charcoal in combination. And they described their method, so that I could copy it
I do have heat in form of a stove, I do have my stickblender as a stirring tool, I can make some easy filtering system to remove the charcoal from the oil, and I do have lots of activated charcoal I have no idea what to use it for (it has too big particles to be used in soap, it is originally for filtering moonshine). I have tried to blend some of it down to smaller particles, which I managed, but not small enough, since my soap came out scratchy. But, it is perfect to use for bleaching red palm oil!
I have 2 kilos of activated charcoal, which is way more than enough for bleaching relatively small amounts, like 2 kilos at a time. I don't have that much red palm oil yet, but I can test out the bleaching process first with my 500 grams bottle of red palm oil I have in my cupboard, just to see if it works as I hope. If it does, I will buy lots of red palm oil and make myself some bleached white palm oil (I can't buy that anywhere in this country, you see, only red palm oil, that's why all the effort instead of just buying bleached palm oil in the first place).
Red palm oil is nice (unless it has illegal dyes) but it can be boring in the long run with too many orange soaps. So, yes, that's why I needed to find a DIY method.
What I was surprised to find, was that heating alone can bleach oils. That seems to be a common DIY method. I found some useless videos on Youtube that described it (but did not show the result). They heated the oil until it started to smoke. And kept it that hot for some while. I did find a scientific description telling it had to be heated to 250 degrees celsius for a certain time, and it should work. In the report, they bleached palm oil by 89% using heat alone. But of course, it is a serious fire hazard that should not be done inside a house. The oil will probably not be too healthy afterwards, but maybe healthy enough to use in soap. The charcoal method is much more gentle, even thought the oil must be heated to 150 degrees celsius, the charcoal added and stirred in the oils (probably constantly, they did not say) and kept at the given temperature for 8 minutes. Finally filtered to separate the charcoal from the oil. I guess ordinary coffee filters would work just fine for that purpose, if it doesn't get all clogged up.
We'll see how it goes when I try it. Hopefully it works without too many problems.
I guess none of you have bleached palm oil at home, since refined palm oil it is easily available most places. But if, please let me know how you did and what your results were. And if some method failed, I would definately like to know, so I don't do the same mistakes
