Free fatty acid separation and recovery using resin

Abstract

The disclosure provides various methods for separating and recovering free fatty acids crude oil containing free fatty acids using certain ion-exchange resins to reduce the amount of free fatty acids in the crude oil to 3% or less such that the resultant oil is useable in downstream chemical processes. After separation and removal of the free fatty acids form the crude oil, the ion-exchange resin is reusable in further free fatty acid separation reactions.