The potential utilization of coconut oil and palm oil as raw material of alkanolamide under alkaline conditions

Indonesia has a high production of vegetable oils. Coconut oil and palm oil are vegetable oils that can be source of raw material in Industry. The purpose of this research is potential use of coconut oil and palm oil as raw materials of alkanolamide in alkaline condition. Alkanolamide is produced from the reaction between triglycerides and diethanolamine. Phosporic acid is used as a solvent for the purification of alkanolamide from its mixture with glycerin. So it is expected that alkanolamide produced has a high purity and the resulted alkanolamides have dispersant and detergency properties that are widely used in various industries. The amidation reaction between triglyceride and diethanolamine was mixing in a glass batch reactor for 2 hours using potassium hydroxide catalyst (KOH) 1% (w/w). The temperature reaction was 125 °C. The second step is purification of alkanolamide. The operation condition is preferably performed at 82 °C. The synthesis of palm oil in this study is constrained because it is easily oxidized and the viscosity was higher than coconut oil. So this research is focused on using coconut oil as raw material. From the purification analysis, resulted 85% of alkanolamide (top layer) and 15% glycerine (bottom layer). From FTIR analysis, The amide group (C=O) is formed at a wavenumber of 1618,34 cm^-1 for alkanolamide from coconut oil and 1617,45 cm^-1 for alkanolamide from palm oil. GC-MS analysis resulted the compound of diethanolamide laurate with the greatest quality percentage of 93% and the largest percentage of 31, 20%.