Will storing palm oil in a storage tank without daily heating lead to spoilage?

Good day everyone,

I need help from you all,

Currently the production of snacks been halted due to lockdowns covid-19 for two weeks,

I have a trouble on heating palm olein in the fryer.

According to our SOP we tend to heat up the oil everyday prior the production begins. Unfortunately due to the shutdowns, i have to instruct the oil to be stored in the oil storage and not kept in the fryer anymore to avoid oxidation process. The doubts are as follows;

1. Is that the oil will be spoilt if no heat up process everyday

2. Storage of the palm olein in the storage tank lead to spoilage 

Please help me to sort this issue,

Thank you.

Hi QCMAIN

I used to work at a bakery/snack producer that had a 2 week shutdown for Christmas & we had the same issue (how to assess the quality of stored oil over life) – although this was some time ago & technology is likely to have progressed since then?.

From what I can recall three things that have the most effect on oxidative rancidity are temperature changes, presence of oxygen & presence of catalysts (contaminants that can promote/accelerate rancidity). So, theoretically keeping your oil at a constant temperature in a suitable covered vessel (food grade stainless steel) is less likely to accelerate rancidity than a constant heating/cooling cycling.

You can test FFA/PV to assess the % of free fatty acids & peroxidase value (assuming you have standards on your specifications to determine acceptable/unacceptable) and/or taste daily to assess the organoleptic quality.  Current wisdom is that the human palate is able to detect miniscule changes in flavor (from products of oxidative rancidity) before this is detected by analytical testing, so along with your chemical testing a panel of trained tasters regularly assessing the oil flavour is a good control.

As your frying temperature will exceed temperatures required for a microbiological kill step & oil will not support microbiological growth the primary consideration would be flavor deterioration (oxidative rancidity).

Best of luck & hope you manage to save some of that oil!

Thank you @LesleySR,

Your suggestions were absolute on point,

Appreciated.

Heating will help keep the oil from solidifying making it easier to transfer / pump.

What you need to look at for the tank is removing the oxygen from the atmosphere.  If you have the means you can purge the tank with nitrogen and fill with the palm oil.  This will ensure no oxidation of the palm oil.