The present invention relates to a method for recovering crude tall oil from a soap which method comprises the steps of: determining a correlation between the crude tall oil content and the water content of the soap, determining an amount of acid and water needed in order to separate an optimal amount of crude tall oil from the soap dependent on the crude tall oil content of the soap, measuring the water content of the soap, adding the optimal amount of acid and water to the soap, mixing the added acid and water with the soap whereby an acidulated soap is formed and the crude tall oil is separated and recovering the separated crude tall oil from the acidulated soap.

A process and apparatus for recovering crude tall oil are disclosed. Acidulation of a crude tall oil soap stream generates a spent acid stream that comprises lignin and entrained crude tall oil. By subjecting the spent acid stream to dissolved gas flotation, a lignin phase comprising entrained crude tall oil can be recovered and causticized, resulting in recovery of most of the crude tall oil that was present in the spent acid stream. A clarified spent acid stream is also generated, which can be treated with caustic and utilized for a soap washing process that integrates easily into the overall CTO recovery process. The apparatus comprises a crude tall oil acidulation unit, a dissolved gas flotation unit, a causticizing unit, and a soap separation unit. The inventive process marries dissolved gas flotation, a well-known water treatment process, with causticization of a recovered lignin phase, a step known from batch acidulation, to improve overall tall oil recovery from a continuous process.

There is a tall diesel composition obtainable from crude tall oil. The tall diesel composition has carboxylic acids in a range of 50-98 wt % and neutral components in a range of 2-50 wt %. The tall diesel composition has 1-20 wt % rosin acids, 6-35 wt % saturated fatty acids, and 59-74 wt % unsaturated fatty acids.

Method of recovering sterols from tall oil pitch which contains steryl esters. In the method the tall oil pitch is subjected to a transefterification reaction with a lower alcohol in a reaction zone to provide a reaction product mixture containing lower alkyl fatty acid esters, free sterols, and at least some unreacted steryl esters. The invention comprises separating the transesterified esters from the reaction product mixture to form a sterol rich fraction which contains free sterols and unreacted steryl esters, liberating sterols from the unreacted steryl esters to form further free sterols, and recovering and optionally purifying the free sterols. The recovery of free sterols can be increased to up to 80 wt % or more while avoiding the formation of undesired side streams containing troublesome impurities.

The present invention relates to a process and system for producing fuel components, and more particularly to a process and system for producing fuel components from a material of biological origin. The process is a two-step or a three-step process comprising purifying of the feed material by evaporating and refining the purified feed material in the presence of at least one catalyst to form a mixture of hydrocarbon compounds from which mixture liquid hydrocarbon compounds are separated and further fractionated into fuel components. The present invention relates further to fuel components obtained by the process of the present invention as well as to the use of the fuel components and a mixture comprising the fuel components.

A method of treating tall oil pitch. In the present method, part of the fatty acids and the resin acids are released from their sterol esters and wood alcohol esters and converted into methanol esters or ethanol esters. The transesterified products are removed from the pitch by evaporation and then condensed, and by hydrogenating the generated condensate the acids are decarboxylated and the double bonds are satisfied. It is possible to use the present method to produce automotive fuel from tall oil pitch.

The present invention relates to a method for recovering crude tall oil from a soap which method comprises the steps of: determining a correlation between the crude tall oil content and the water content of the soap, determining an amount of acid and water needed in order to separate an optimal amount of crude tall oil from the soap dependent on the crude tall oil content of the soap, measuring the water content of the soap, adding the optimal amount of acid and water to the soap, mixing the added acid and water with the soap whereby an acidulated soap is formed and the crude tall oil is separated and recovering the separated crude tall oil from the acidulated soap.

The present disclosure provides a method of purifying an organic material of biological origin, which includes providing a feedstock containing organic material of biological origin; purifying the feedstock in a pre-treatment step including heating the feedstock in a presence of an adsorbent at a temperature of at least 150 C., to obtain a heat-treated feedstock; filtering the heat-treated feedstock to remove adsorbent and to obtain a purified feedstock; and optionally subjecting the purified feedstock to further processing, wherein the purifying is performed in a cone vessel having a first cross sectional area in an upper part of the vessel which decreases downwards to a second cross sectional area, which is smaller than the first cross sectional area.

The present application is directed to the preparation of low viscosity bio-oils from the hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) of lignocellulosic biomass in the presence of a crude glycerol and water mixture achieving a high biomass conversion ratio. The modified HTL process allows the direct use of crude glycerol as an effective solvent for biomass liquefaction creating a highly efficient and cost-effective process. Furthermore, the resulting bio-oils containing liquefied biomass, crude glycerol and water, were successfully applied as an inexpensive green substitute in the preparation of bio-based phenol formaldehyde (BPF) adhesives which retain bonding strengths (dry or wet strength) as required by ASTM standard and free formaldehyde emission levels at the F*** and F**** level according to the JIS standard.

The present invention relates to a method and system for reducing residual soap in crude tall oil, wherein crude tall oil is supplied via piping to at least one vessel, soap number of the crude tall oil is determined using on-line measuring technique and sulphuric acid is added to the crude tall oil at a site of blending, where the dosing of the sulphuric acid is adjusted on-line to provide soap number of not more than 2.