Mhouddin, Ghulam2016-04-142016-04-142015https://escholar.umt.edu.pk/handle/123456789/1769Supervisor: Dr Ayesha MohyuddinFatty acids are naturally distributed as components of animal and vegetable fats (triglycerides of saturated fatty acids) and oils (triglycerides of unsaturated fatty acids). They are the characteristic constituent of lipids and play vital role in functions such as fluidity, flexibility and material transfer in bio-membranes. Fat or oil, can be hydrolyzed into corresponding fatty acids and glycerine. Fatty acids have found their many commercial applications today thus their production on commercial scale is the aim of fatty acid producing industries. The present research work is aimed to find out the suitable route to extract the stearic acid from its natural source “tallow”. For this purpose meat tallow is hydrolysed at a constant temperature of 80 °C, achieved on hotplate equipped with continuous stirrer, with strong hydrochloric acid while varying its strength from 2M to 10M and effects of acid strength on degree of release of target fatty acid has been studied. Another important parameter that remains the focus of this work is the effect of reaction time on successful release of fatty acid under the same set of reaction conditions. Different tests i.e. Degree of hydrolysis, Acid value, Saponification value, Free fatty acid value and Ester value helped to characterize the process success. These entire characterization tests agree on the point that increasing the strength of hydrolysing acid increase the percent release of fatty acids from their triglycerides. Increasing the time duration for hydrolysis also makes it possible to achieve high yields of stearic acid from its natural source “tallow”. The factor of hydrolysing acid strength is important and a controlling factor but high yields can only be achieved at high reaction time. ixMS ThesisStearic acidTallowThesis