Bailey’s Industrial Oil and Fat Products, Sixth Edition, Six Volume Set.

The oleochemical industry is fairly well developed and its future secure because of a reliable supply of raw materials. The world’s fats and oils output has been growing rapidly over the past few decades, far beyond the need for human nutrition. The world’s production and consumption of natural oils and fats has grown from 79.2 million t in 1990 to 117 million t in 2001. Malaysia, Indonesia, and Argentina are notable excess-supply producers; India, the European Union countries, and China are notable high-demand areas that supplement regional production through imports (1). The principal raw materials from which the natural fatty acids are derived are tallow, crude tall oil, coconut, palm kernel, and soybean oils. Many new fatty acid plants have been built in Southeast Asia, which is a major source of coconut and palm oils used as raw materials for the production of C8–C14 fatty acids. Altogether, those countries (excluding China and India) have producers of fatty acids from oil splitting with a capacity of 1.5 million t. Significant amounts of the increasing production are being exported to other areas, including the United States, Western Europe, and Japan (2). The Philippines, a major producer of coconut oil, established its first oleochem-ical plant of limited capacity in 1967. The plant produced only 3,000 t/year of coc