Determination of shell content in palm kernel cake

A method for determining shell in palm kernel cake (PKC) is described. This simple and rapid method requires little pretreatment compared with the method currently used in PKC trade, in which the sample undergoes defatting, acid and alkali digestion, and washing, before a chloroform-alcohol solution is used to separate the shells. In the proposed method, only defatting the sample is required. The shells are separated by the density difference between the shell and PKC in a potassium iodide solution. Recoveries of at least 93% were obtained, and the correlation coefficient between the actual shell content and the determined shell content was 0.999, with gradients of 0.97 and 0.98 for fine and coarse shell, respectively.