Commutativity of the Arens product in lattice ordered algebras

Let be an Abelian Archimedean lattice ordered algebra. The order bidual furnished with the Arens product is again a lattice ordered algebra. We show that the order continuous order bidual is Abelian. This solves an open problem and improves a result of Scheffold, who proved it for the case of normed lattice ordered algebras. The proof is based on the up-down-up approximation of positive elements in the order continuous order bidual by elements in the canonical image of in Components of positive elements in are characterized and the result is applied to the Arens product of -and almost -algebras.