Bleaching Performance and Mechanism of Al-MCM-41 Tuned by Si/Al in Rapeseed Oil

Traditional activated clay (AC) bleaching usually shows limited adsorption selectivity, leading to micronutrient loss during pigment removal, and also suffers from high residual oil retention and poor regenerability. Developing mild bleaching materials with both high adsorption efficiency and selectivity is therefore important for oil refining. Mesoporous Al-MCM-41 (AM) adsorbents with different Si/Al ratios were prepared and characterized in pore structure and acidity, and the bleaching performance against AC in terms of pigment removal and the retention of micronutrients in rapeseed oil and the bleaching mechanism were studied. The results showed that AM25 (Si/Al = 25) exhibited the best overall performance among the AM samples under the tested conditions (70 °C, 20 min). It achieved a bleaching efficiency of 92.3% and removed 94.56% of chlorophyll, 92.94% of lutein, and 84.09% of β-carotene. In addition, AM25 reduced the peroxide value from 2.52 to 0.58 mmol/kg. High retentions of tocopherols (93.89%), phytosterols (98.73%), and squalene (96.32%) were also observed. Meanwhile, the adsorption rates of α-tocopherol, brassicasterol, and α-linolenic acid showed the highest values in their relative homologues of tocopherols, phytosterols, and free fatty acids (FFAs), respectively, due to differences in the methyl amount of tocopherols, the side-chain unsaturation of phytosterols, and the fatty acid chain unsaturation of fatty acids. Furthermore, the kinetic and isotherm data for chlorophyll and carotenoids were better described by the pseudo-second-order and Freundlich models, respectively. Combined with thermodynamic analysis, they indicated that adsorption was a spontaneous, endothermic, entropy-driven, heterogeneous multilayer process dominated by physical adsorption. Further, pigment adsorption was mainly governed by uniform mesopores and Si–OH/Si–OH–Al sites in AM. Among them, carotenoid removal depended primarily on the dispersion effect of moderately strong acid sites within pore-confined regions, whereas chlorophyll removal was more sensitive to the number of acidic sites in AM. AM25 still maintained 83.31% bleaching efficiency after five regeneration cycles. These performances of AM25 are significantly superior to that of AC.