The Quality Improvement of Virgin Coconut Oil Produced by Ruensamunprai Aua-Noi Women Group

Abstract

Virgin coconut oil (VCO) is a high value-added product from coconut. The VCO production in most communities was produced by fermentation method based on simple processes with low cost. The quality of virgin coconut oil such as color, turbidity and moisture content, produced  by Satri Ruensamunprai Aua-Noi and other communities in Prachuab Khiri Khan Province, was inconsistent and of poor quality. Therefore, the aim of this study is to improve the quality of the VCO produced by the community in terms of color, turbidity and moisture content. Various pore sizes of polyethylene (PE) sheets, percentage of sodium chloride and incubation time were investigated to improve the color, turbidity and moisture content quality. The result showed that the color and turbidity can be improved by filtering VCO through one micrometer pore size polyethylene sheet and moisture content can be reduced by incubating VCO with 2% (w/w) of sodium chloride for 24 hours, the treated VCO can meet the Thai community standard (0.2%w/w).