Fats and oils processing

Oilseeds Oil content (%)

Soyabean 19.1

Safflower 36.4

Sunflower 38.7

Rapeseed 40.3

Cotton seed 18.2

tallow is derived from mutton or beef

lard is derived from pork.
 Introduction
Edible fats and oils are separated from animal tissues,
oilseeds and oil bearing fruits.
The purpose is to obtain triglycerides in high yield and purity
and to produce co-products of maximum value.
The oilseeds are processed by one of three types of
processing:
-Expeller or screw press extraction
- Prepressed solvent extraction
- Expander-solvent extraction
Oil bearing fruits are pressed to obtain oil:
- after drying as for copra
- after sterilising as for palm fruit
- cold pressing as for olives to preserve flavour and
odour
 Oilseed extraction (Cleaning, dehulling and size reduction)
Cleaning of foreign materials: stems, pods, leaves, grains, dirt, small
stones, extraneous seeds using highcapacity vibratory dry
screeners/ screens and aspirators.

Cottonseed requires an additional delinting process to remove the

white or fuzzy linters from the seed.

After cleaning, seeds are dehulled. Hulls have less than 1% oil but
will absorb and retain oil in the press cake and reduce yield.
Removal of hull also increases the protein content of the meal.
Additionally some oilseed hulls contain high melting waxes that
extract with the oil.

Thin and fragile hulls are removed by an impact huller in

conjunction with multistage aspiration. Thicker hulls are subjected
to a cutting action and often need a beating action to aid
separation. The hulls are separated by an aspirator which are
further processed to separate the oil and meal.
 Oil extraction (size reduction)

The next step is to reduce the seeds to smaller particles.

The only exception to this are very small seeds, such as
rapeseed or canola. The objective is primarily to reduce
the particle size sufficiently to ensure uniform cooking
without producing an excessive quantity of fine particles.
Size reduction also disrupts the oilbearing cells.

Breaking is achieved either in hammer mills or on roll

stands, with two pairs of fluted rolls mounted one above
the other. Coarse grinding helps in roller flaking.
 Oil extraction (Flaking)
All seeds must be flaked. Seeds are passed between smooth
rolls to produce flakes of typically 0.3-0.4 mm thickness. Rolls
are hydraulically loaded and are typically 600-700 mm in
diameter and 1000-1500 mm long.
Flaking helps to rupture the cell structure and make the oil
more readily available.
Production of excessive fines should be avoided as fines
create problems in later processing.
Temperature and moisture should be monitored as too cold or
too dry seeds will shatter than flake.
In some cases, seeds are conditioned by raising the
temperature to 60 oC without significant drying. This helps to
make the seed more pliable and give good flakes.
 Oilseed extraction (cooking)
The next step is to heat or cook the ground or flaked oilseed. Cooking
temperature varies depending upon seed size; ranges from 85-105 oC. Steam
at 6-10 bar gauge pressure is used.

Cooked seeds are dried to 3-5% moisture for efficient operation of the screw
press. Seeds which are solvent extracted without pre pressing such as
soyabeans are conditioned to 60-65 o C prior to flaking.

Cooking temperature in the range from 57-85 oC should be avoided as

phospholipase D that makes the phosphatides nonhydratable and more difficult
to remove is active in this temperature range.

Proper cooking results in:

Complete breakdown of the oil cells by flashing off intrinsic moisture as steam
Coagulation of the proteins to facilitate oil and meal separation
Insolubilisation of the phospholipids
Increased fluidity of the oil at higher temperatures
Destruction of molds and bacteria
Inactivation of enzymes
Drying to a suitable moisture content
Destroys gossipol in cottonseed, a complex polyphenolic compound that is toxic to swine and
poultry
 The adverse effect of enzymes upon oils are:
Lipase causes an increase in FFAs
Lipoxygenase causes formation of peroxides and secondary
oxidation products
Phospholipase causes increases the nonhydratable
phospholipids
Myrosinase causes formation of sulfur compounds, develops
meal flavour and digestive problems
 Oilseed extraction (cooking in an expander)
The expander is a low shear extruder that heats , homogenises and
shapes oilseeds into porous collets or pellets with a high bulk density.

Steam is injected into the oilseed flakes or cakes in the expander,

under pressure, and then this mixture is extruded through dies to the
atmosphere.

The collets expand as pressure is released, hence the name

expander.

Some expanders have a drainage cage to reduce the oil content of

high oilseeds to less than 30%, thus enabling the production of intact
collets for direct solvent extraction instead of the prepress extraction
process.

The high bulk density of the collets improves the efficiency of solvent
extraction process by 15-30% due to higher extraction, low retention
time and lower level of nonhydratable phosphatides.
 Oil extraction (Expeller or screw press)
Expeller pressing mechanically squeezes the oil from the seed. Used
for seeds with relatively high oil content.

In the screw press, the cooked flakes are separated into crude oil
and press cake. The press cake has 3-10% oil and used as animal
feed. The oil is allowed to settle and then filtered and transferred to
refiners. Continuous screw presses are also available.

Solids in this oil can be simply removed screening the oil over either
a static or a vibratory screen. Final clarification is done in a
hermetically-sealed filter with stainless steel leaves in which the
material itself is used to generate a pre coat through which the oil is
filtered.

In large plants, horizontal decanters are used in place of filters. The

solids that settle down are again returned to the press feed stream
for reprocessing.
 Oil extraction (prepress solvent extraction)

In prepress solvent extraction, a portion of the oil is removed 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 15-18%.
The remaining oil in this partially deoiled cake is then solvent extracted
using the same procedure as for direct solvent extraction.

Both the oil fractions are mixed before refining.

The advantages are that the capacity of screw press is increased and a
small solvent extraction plant is required to recover the oil from the
deoiled press cake.
The cake produces from a high-pressure press can be quite large pieces,
which becomes very hard on cooling. Breaking rolls are used.
 Oil extraction (direct solvent extraction)
This process removes the oil directly from conditioned oilseeds with an
organic solvent.

Used for soybeans; it is problematic for oilseeds with high oil content , such as
cottonseed, sunflower, rapeseed, safflower, and peanut. The oil content of the
oilseed flakes caused them to disintegrate into fines during the extraction
process.

For these high oil seeds, a lowshear extrusion method is followed before
solvent extraction.

Process steps:
Leach the oil out of the cake, flakes or collets with a solvent, usually
hexane. It is done at 50-55 oC due to the vapour pressure of hexane.
Oil is separated from solvent from the miscella by conventional distillation
method.
The recovered solvent is separated from the accumulated moisture in a
gravity separation tank and reused in a solvent extraction operation.
The hexane free oil is cooled and filtered.
 Oil extraction from oil bearing plants
Oil bearing plants of commercial importance are olive and palm.
Their oil recovery process is different from those used for oilseeds and
animal tissues.
Olives
1. Olives soon after harvest are processed to prevent rise in acidity. The
foreign material is removed and olives are washed.
2. The olives are ground or milled to a coarse paste to release the oil from
oil bearing cells and formation of large oil droplets from the smaller
droplets.
3. The paste is subjected to any one of the three methods: hydraulic press,
continuous centrifuge or adhesion filtering.
4. The adhesion filtering unit has 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.
5. The husks or residue are dried and oil is further extracted using solvent.
6. 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.
2. Pomace oil that is obtained by solvent extraction and does not qualify as olive oil.
 Oil extraction for palm oil
Palm oil is extracted by cooking and pressing.

The palm is sterilised with steam at 130-145o C for about an hour to:
Inactivate hydrolytic enzymes
Loosen the individual fruits for subsequent processing

The sterilised fruits are removed from the stalk by vigorous shaking
and reheated to 95-100 oC for 20-30 min in a digester to loosen the
pericarp from the nuts and to break the oil cells.

The liquid is separated from the semi solid phase in a screw press
followed by centrifugation and vacuum drying to remove the
moisture.

Overripe fruit bruises easily, accelerates FFA rise through enzymatic

hydrolysis and adversely affects bleachability of the extracted oil.
 Animal fat recovery
Animal fat is recovered from fatty tissues by cooking process
known as rendering, either wet or dry rendering. Wet
rendering process is followed for obtaining edible animal fat.

The fatty tissues are cut into small pieces of 2-5 cm with a
crusher. The pieces are cooked in batch or continuous cooker
with agitation to evaporate the moisture, breakdown the fat
cells and release the fat.

The cooked fatty tissues are subjected to wet rendering. Wet

rendering can be done below boiling point of water or using
steam at 40-60 psi (2.7-4 bar) and a corresponding high
temperature. Under these conditions, the fats separates from
the solids and rises to the top of the vessel. The fat is drawn off
and purified by settling or with a centrifuge. There is
generation of ~o.35% FFA during wet rendering.