FATS AND OILS RECOVERY

• Edible fats and oils have been separated from animal tissues, oilseeds, and oil-
bearing fruits for thousands of years.
• The purpose of all fats and oils recovery processes is to obtain triglycerides in
high yield and purity and to produce coproducts of maximum value.
• The oilseeds are processed by one of three types of processes: (1) expeller or
screw press extraction, (2) prepress solvent extraction, and (3) expander–solvent
extraction. The preferred oilseed extraction process depends on the
(i) quantity of oil present in the oilseed,
(ii) the quantity of oil that can remain in the meal,
(iii) how much meal protein denaturation is allowed,
(iv) the investment capital available, and

(v) how restrictive the environmental laws are regarding emissions of organic
compounds.
• Oil-bearing fruits are pressed to obtain oil, sometimes after drying (as with
coconut copra) or sterilizing (as with palm fruit), or are cold pressed to preserve
flavor and odor (as with olives).
• Animal tissues may be wet- or dry-rendered to separate the fats.
1. Oilseed Extraction
• Most oilseeds require some degree of cleaning and preparation before the oil is
separated from the solid portion of the seed.
• Foreign matter reduces oil and protein yields, adversely affects oil quality, and
increases wear and damage to the processing equipment.
• Stems, pods, leaves, broken grain, dirt, small stones, and extraneous seeds are the
typical components of the foreign material found in soybeans, sunflower seeds,
safflower seeds, canola seeds, and peanuts.
• High-capacity dry screeners are used to remove all materials that are over- or
undersize by utilizing a combination of screens and aspiration.
• Permanent or electromagnets also are used for the removal of tramp iron
objects.
• Cottonseed requires an additional delinting process to remove the white or fuzzy
linters from the seed.
• After cleaning, most of the seeds are dehulled. The hulls have a low oil content
(usually less than 1%), will absorb and retain oil in the press cake, and reduce the
capacity of the extraction equipment. Additionally, some oilseed hulls contain high
melting waxes that extract with the oil.
• An aspirator separates the hulls from the kernels or meats, which are further
processed to separate the oil and meal. Usually, only about half of the sunflower
seed hulls are removed. Canola and safflower seeds are not dehulled because their
small size makes it difficult to remove the hulls efficiently.
• The oil extraction process is facilitated by the reduction of the seed to small
particles. Size reduction to disrupt the oil-bearing cells can be accomplished by
grinding or rolling the seeds to produce flakes. Most extraction plants prefer to
flake the oilseeds, but it is necessary to rough grind some of the larger oilseeds
before sending the pieces through the flaking rollers.
• The next step in oilseed preparation is heating or cooking the ground or flaked oilseed.
Cooking temperatures can vary with the seed type and may range from 80 to 105°C (176
to 221°F). However, studies have shown that phospholipase D, an enzyme that makes the
phosphatides nonhydratable and more difficult to remove, is highly active at 135 to 185°F
(57 to 85°C), therefore, this cooking temperature range should be avoided. Proper cooking
results in:

the complete breakdown of the oil cells,

coagulation of the proteins to facilitate the oil and meal separation,
insolubilization of the phospholipids,
increased fluidity of the oil at higher temperatures,
destruction of molds and bacteria,
inactivation of enzymes, and
drying to a suitable moisture content.
i. Expeller or Screw Press Extraction
• Expeller pressing mechanically squeezes the oil from the seed.
• Mechanical pressing is normally applied to seed that is relatively high in
extractable oil and is limited to
minor oilseeds or
locations in which raw materials are not sufficient or
local regulations prohibit solvent extraction plants.
• In the screw press, the cooked flakes are separated into crude oil and press cake.
The press cake, which can contain 3 to 10% oil, is usually ground into meal and
sold as a protein source. After settling and filtration to remove fine particles, the
crude oil is then transferred to oil refiners for further processing into finished
product formulations.
• Continuous screw presses are used for the mechanical extraction of soybeans,
flaxseed, peanuts, copra or coconut, palm kernel, and other oilseed varieties in
various parts of the world.
• Lower expelling temperatures of cold-pressed oil at 95 to 140°F (35oC-60oC)
improves the oil quality with regard to phospholipids and color over the warm-
pressed oil at 158 to 230°F (70 to 110°C). However, oil yield and the levels of
nutritional components, such as tocopherols, carotene, and phenolic acids are
improved with the higher temperature pressing.
• Enhanced crude oil quality obtained by expelling rather than solvent extraction
may allow milder processing conditions, such as elimination of caustic refining in
favor of acid degumming and a lower deodorization temperature.
ii. Prepress Solvent Extraction
• Prepress solvent extraction removes a portion of the oil with expellers and the
remainder of the oil is extracted with an organic solvent.
• During prepressing, the expeller is choked so that less pressure develops and less
oil is recovered. The oil content of the prepress cake is typically 15 to 18%.
• The remaining oil in this partially de-oiled cake is then solvent-extracted using the
same procedure as for direct solvent extraction.
• The prepressed and solvent-extracted oils are usually mixed before refining.
• The advantages of this system are that the capacity of the screw press is increased
and a smaller solvent extraction plant is required to recover the oil from the de-
oiled press cake.
iii. Direct Solvent Extraction
• Direct solvent extraction removes the oil directly from conditioned oilseeds with
an organic solvent.
• Solvent extraction of soybean flakes was a common practice in the United States
as early as 1940, but it was problematic for oilseeds with high oil contents, such as
cottonseed, sunflower, rapeseed, safflower, and peanut. The high oil content of the
oilseed flakes caused them to disintegrate into fines during the extraction process.
• A low-shear extrusion method, with equipment identified as expanders, solved this
problem. After the oilseeds have been properly prepared, the extraction process
can begin. The theory of extraction is very simple: Leach the oil out of the cake,
flakes, or collets with a solvent, usually hexane.
• Even though elevated temperatures reduce oil viscosity and enhance diffusion, the
hexane vapor pressure limits the practical operating temperatures of the extractor
and its contents to approximately 50 to 55°C (122 to 131°F).
• Separation of the oil and solvent is accomplished by conventional distillation
methods. The full miscella, which is the solvent and oil mixture, is distilled to free
the oil from the solvent.
• The recovered solvent is separated from the accumulated moisture in a gravity
separation tank and reused in the solvent-extraction operation.
• The hexane free oil is cooled and filtered before storage or further processing.
• Solvent extraction may decrease oil quality in comparison to the pressing process
because of the increased content of undesirable minor components, such as
phospholipids and colorants.
2. Oil-Bearing fruit Extraction
• Two oil-bearing fruits of commercial importance are olive and palm. The oils from
these fruits must be recovered by processes different from those used for oilseeds
and animal tissues.
(i) Olive Oil Extraction
• Olives must be harvested as soon as they reach maturity and brought directly to
the extraction plant after collection. Because it is a fruit, it cannot be stored as if it
was a seed nor can it be dried to preserve it. Olive oil has to be extracted as soon
as possible before the acidity increases and impairs quality.
• The olives are ground or milled to a course paste after separating out the foreign
material and washing. Milling releases the oil from the oil-bearing cells and helps
smaller droplets of oil merge into larger drops.
• . Three general procedures are utilized for oil extraction from the paste: hydraulic
presses, continuous centrifuges, and adhesion filtering.
• The adhesion filtration equipment has a series of steel blades that are dipped into
the olive paste and then withdrawn, after which the oil is allowed to drip off the
blades.
• Three fractions are separated from the olive paste: (1) oil, (2) wastewater, and (3)
husks or residue.
• The husks are dried and the remaining oil extracted with solvent, thus, two oil types
are obtained from olives: (1) olive oil, which is pressed without further processing
(other than washing, decantation, centrifugation, and filtration) and contains less
than 3.5% FFA; and (2) pomace oil, which is obtained by solvent extraction of the
husks and does not qualify as olive oil.
(ii) Palm Oil Extraction
• In contrast to other oils, palm oil is expressed by cooking and pressing. First, it is
sterilized with steam at 266 to 293°F (130 to 145°C) for about one hour to:
inactivate hydrolytic enzymes,
loosens the individual fruits, and
prepares it for subsequent processing steps.

• The sterilized fruits are stripped from the bunch stalks by vigorous shaking and
beating using drum-type strippers.
• Then, the fruits are reheated to 95 to 100°C (203 to 212°F) for 20 to 30 minutes in
a digester to loosen the pericarp from the nuts and to break the oil cells.
• The liquid and semisolid phases are then separated with a screw press similar to
those used for oilseed extraction. The liquid phase is centrifuged and vacuum
dried to remove moisture.
• The quality of the palm oil is dependent on the fruit bunches delivered to the oil
mill. Overripe fruit bruises easily, accelerating FFA rise through enzymatic
hydrolysis and adversely affecting bleachability of the extracted oil.
3. Animal fat recovery
• Animal fats are recovered from fatty tissues by cooking processes known as rendering. The
two predominant rendering processes are wet and dry rendering.
• Wet rendering produces the better quality oil while dry rendering produces the best quality
protein.
• The wet process is preferred for edible animal fats and the dry process for inedible products.
• Regardless of the process used, the materials from the meatpacking plant to be rendered are
broken up into small pieces (2 to 5 cm) with a crusher or pre-breaker. The pieces are then
cooked in batch or continuous cookers with agitation to:
evaporate the moisture,
break down the fat cells, and
release the fat.
• The procedure after this point defines the rendering process utilized.
(i) Wet Rendering

• The two varieties of wet rendering are low temperature, which is conducted at
temperatures up to the boiling point of water, and high temperature or steam rendering,
which is carried out under pressure in closed vessels.
• Most of the edible animal fat produced in the United States is rendered by the steam
process. Lard produced with this process is identified as prime steam lard.
• The typical equipment used is a vertical cylindrical steel vessel with a cone bottom,
designed for a steam pressure of 40 to 60 psi (2.7 to 4 bar) and a corresponding high
temperature. The vessel is filled with the fatty material from the cooking operation plus a
small amount of water, and steam is injected to boil the water and displace the air.
• The vessel is then closed, except for a small vent, and steam injection is continued until
the operating temperature and pressure are attained. Under these conditions, the fat
separates from the solids and rises to the top of the vessel. The pressure is then released
and the fat is drawn off and purified by settling or with a centrifuge. Some hydrolysis of
the fat occurs during steam rendering to elevate the FFA content above 0.35%.
(ii) Dry Rendering
• Dry rendering involves cooking the material at 115 to 120°C (239 to 248°F) in agitated,
steam-jacketed vessels until the moisture has evaporated, usually 1.5 to 4 hours.
• No steam is injected into the fatty material during processing as with the wet process. The
cooked material is then screened to drain off the free fat before pressing the high-protein
solids to separate the remaining 6 to 10% residual fat. The fats accumulated are then
centrifuged or filtered.
(iii) Low temperature rendering
• Low temperature rendering is the most recent development in the preparation of meat
fats. In this process the fatty tissue are ground as finely as possible and the mass is heated to
just above the melting point of the fat.
• The non-fatty material is then removed by centrifugation. The fat is further clarified in a
second centrifuge before going to storage.