EXTRACTION

METHODS
Dr. Muhammad Asim
Shabbir

1
 Introduction
■ Extraction is the first step in the refining process of vegetable oils
and fats.
■ Oils and fats are extracted from their original source (the seeds,
fruits or other oil-bearing raw materials) using a variety of methods.
■ For crude or virgin oils, the oil is extracted directly from the fruit by
means of a simple mechanical press and used without the need for
any further processing. This process is known as cold pressing.
■ Modern oil mills extract oil using a combination of pressing,
cooking and solvent extraction techniques.

2
 Cont…
■ A typical extraction system consists of:
i. Handling and storage of raw materials
ii. Cleaning to remove tramp iron, dirt, foreign weed seeds, and stones
iii. Removing hulls or cortex in cracking, aspirating, or screening operations
iv. Cracking or rough grinding the kernels, meats, or prepressed cake
v. Steaming (rendering, tempering or cooking) of the meats
vi. Flaking the small pieces between smooth flaking rolls
vii. Extracting the oil with or without solvent
vii. Separating the meal, from residual oil through solvent extraction
viii. Removing the solvent from oil-solvent miscella to obtain oil.
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 Handling and preparation of oil
bearing raw material
■ The handling and control of the raw materials for the oil seed industry
can be primarily characterized by:
1. Short harvest season
2. Necessity to move them into protected storage in minimum time
3. Required care before they can be processed
■ The raw materials can be treated and stored successfully with minimal
deterioration long enough to allow the processing industry to operate
throughout the year.

4
 Cont…
■Storage
■ Bulk storage in warehouses on flat floors has the advantage of
easy control of oil seeds, like cottonseeds, sunflower seeds,
corn germ and meals etc.
■ To prevent self heating or autocombustion of the seeds,
recycling by horizontal and vertical transportation means are
recomended.

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 Types of extraction methods

■ Fats and oils may be recovered from oil-bearing animal or

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 Rendering
■ Rendering of Animal fats
■ The rendering process is applied on a large scale to the production of
animal fats such as tallow, lard, bone fat, and whale oil.
■ It consists of cutting or chopping the fatty tissue into small pieces that are
boiled in open vats or cooked in steam digesters.
■ The fat, gradually liberated from the cells, floats to the surface of the
water, where it is collected by skimming.
■ The membranous matter (greaves) is separated from the aqueous (gluey)
phase by pressing in hydraulic or screw presses, additional fat is thereby
obtained.

7
 Cont..
■ Rendering of Vegetable Oils
■ The crudest method of rendering oil from oleaginous fruits, still practiced
in some countries consists of:
• Heaping them in piles
• Exposing them to the sun
• Extracting the oil that remains in dried leftovers
■ This process is used in the preparation of palm oil, fresh palm fruits are
boiled in water, and the oil is skimmed from the surface.
■ Such processes can be used only with seeds or fruits (such as olive and
palm) that contain large quantities of easily released fatty matter.

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 Mechanical pressing
■ With many oil-bearing seeds and nuts, rendering will not liberate the oil from
the cellular structures in which it is held.
■ In these cases the cell walls are broken by grinding, flaking, rolling, or
pressing under high pressures to liberate the oil.
■ The general sequence of modern operations in pressing oilseeds and nuts is as
follows:
i. The seeds are passed over magnetic separators to remove any stray bits of
metal.
ii. If necessary, the shells or hulls are removed.
iii. The kernels are converted to coarse meal by grinding them between grooved
rollers or with special types of hammer mills.
iv. They are pressed in hydraulic or screw presses with or without preliminary
heating, depending on the type of oil-bearing material and the quality of oil
desired. 9
 Pressing machines
■ Many different mechanical devices have been used for pressing.
■ The Romans developed a screw press, for the production of olive oil centuries
ago
■ The Chinese employed the same series of operations followed in modern
pressing mills which include:
1. Bruising or grinding the seeds in stone mills,
2. Heating the meal in open pans
3. Pressing out the oil in a press

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 Cont…
■ The yield of oil from the hydraulic press is considerably higher than that
from earlier processing methods because of the much higher applied
pressures.
■ In open presses, the ground seed material was confined in cloths of human
hair or, less commonly, camel hair. Pressures on the cake varied from
approximately 70 to 140 kilograms per square centimeter (1,000 to 2,000
pounds per square inch)
■ Closed-type press were later introduced in which the oil-containing
material was confined in a strong perforated steel cage during the pressing
operation. Pressures of approximately 400 kilograms per square centimeter
or more were attained.

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 Cont…
■ The modern screw press replaced many of the hydraulic presses because
of following benefits:
1. Continuous process
2. Greater capacity
3. Requires less labor
4. Remove more oil.

Screw Press
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 Solvent extraction
■ Cakes obtained by pressing operations still retain 3
to 15 percent of residual oil
■ When the value of the oil is considerably greater as
oil than as a part of the meal, it is desirable to obtain
more complete extraction with solvents.
■ Modern commercial methods of solvent extraction
use volatile purified hydrocarbons, especially the
various grades of petroleum benzene.
■ In large-scale operations, solvent extraction is a
more economical means of recovering oil than is
mechanical pressing.
Example of Solvent extractor
(Soxhlet’s apparatus)

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Cont….
The pre-pressed cake from the pre-pressing workshop is sent to the extraction
workshop. Through the bucket elevator, the cake is lifted to the overhead screw
elevator and enters the extraction tank.
■ When the temperature reaches 45-50℃, the solvent (n-Hexane) enters the tank
extractor through the spraying pipe.
■ After immersion for 40-60 minutes, oil is separated from pre-pressed cake and
this mixture of solvent + oil is known as miscella.
■ The miscella is pumped into storage tank, and fresh solvent is pumped into the
extraction tank to immerse again for 40 minutes.
■ The miscella is then transferred to distillation tank where solvent is removed,
and crude oil is separated and collected which can be further refined.
 Cont..
Essential Oils
■ Soxhlet’s apparatus is most commonly used in laboratory for solvent extraction.
■ However, the industrial method employs food grade solvents like hexane and
ethanol to isolate essential oils from plant material. It is best suited for plant
materials that yield low amounts of essential oil.
■ Through this process, the non-volatile plant material such as waxes and
pigments, are also extracted and sometimes removed through other processes.
■ Once the plant material has been treated with the solvent, it produces a waxy
aromatic compound called a “concrete”. When this concrete substance is mixed
with alcohol, the oil particles are released.
■ The chemicals and waxes used in the process are then removed by various
techniques of heating and distillation and the oil is collected after the alcohol is
removed from the mixture.
Industrial solvent extraction