Plasma Modified Membrane for Daily Recovery of Oil from Repeated Frying Operation with Frequent Oil Replenishment

Sunflower oil was used for deep frying of potatoes at 170 +/- A 5 A degrees C and for 8 h per day for 5 days in a fryer with an automatic oil filtration system. Three different frying operations were performed: operation (OP)-1, OP-2 and OP-3; that correspond to the oil unfiltered at the end of each frying day, the oil filtered through the fryer's own filter (passive filtration) and the oil firstly subjected to passive filtration and then filtered through a polyethersulfone membrane modified with hexamethyldisiloxane via radio frequency plasma (75 W-5 min, discharge power-time), respectively. The performance of each operation was investigated in terms of free fatty acids (FFA), conjugated dienoic acids (CD), TOTOX value, total polar content (TPC), Hunter color, viscosity, fatty acid composition, and tocopherol content. The results showed that OP-3 could decrease FFA, CD, TOTOX, TPC, L*a*b* value, viscosity and linoleic acid (18:2)/palmitic acid (16:0) ratio in 29.6, 11.7, 25, 30.8, 6.1*11.3*20.8*, 7.8, 12.2 %, respectively, compared to the unfiltered oil (OP-1). Regenerated oil from OP-3 had a frying life approximately 17 h more than oils from both OP-1 and OP-2.