ABSTRACT

 Four traditional methods of processing were used to extract palm oil from the palm fruits harvested from a farm at Nsirimo in Abia State. The processing methods used included pressing out 4he oil manually after boiling and pounding, dispensing the processed. fruits in excess water and scooping the floating oil portion out and boiled. The third method involved the addition of hot dried mud into the pounded fruit and subsequently squeezing out the oil manually while the forth method involved pounding the raw fruits without boiling and squeezing out the oil. The physical and chemical properties of both the fresh and stored oil samples were evaluated. From the results, the scooped method had the highest yield (31 .8%) while the Raw method of oil extraction h9d the lowest yield (19.88%). The analysis showed the storage did not significantly affect the fire point, cloud point, flash point, saponification V value, (P< 0.05). colour, smoke point, vitamin A, acid value free fatty acid were affected by storage at different processing methods. Vitamin A of the oil produced by the raw method was significantly different from oil produced from other methods. Scooped and Red hot mid method of oil extraction scored the lowest value in free fatty acid (0.15 and 0.377)mg/KOH while the Raw method of oil extraction scored the highest (0.23 and 0.45)mg/KOH for fresh and stored oU samples, respectively