Oil Processing Plants

An efficient Extraction would need that every oil bearing cell of the material is in contact with the solvent. In other words, the smooth preparation prior to main extraction is very vital to comply with this contact, smaller the material size, better the penetration of the solvent into the oil bearing cells, but too fine a size will prevent the solvent from percolation through the mass. Hence an optimum size is absolutely essential for efficient extraction.

The method of material preparation does vary from material to material depending upon its oil content and physical properties. We group them as follows:

• Oil Cakes
• Oil Bearing Seeds (Soybeans, Sunflower, Rape Seed, Canola)
• Floury Materials (Rice Bran)

In the case of oil cakes, being big pieces, has to be reduced to proper size and without fail, ensuring that there are no ‘fines’. OILTEK Cake Sizer and Cake Cracker are the finest to this process.

In case of high oil content seeds like soybean, sunflower, rapeseed, canola it passes through, the well proven OILTEK Expander after cracking, cooking & flaking. Seeds like sunflower, rapeseed, canola will pass through the squeezomatic attachment for squeezing the oil before the collects goes to extraction, passing through updated OILTEK Drier Cooler.

In case of Floury materials like rice bran, etc. any of the above equipment are not workable. Hence an OILTEK Pelletiser or Expander with conditioning arrangement has been used to form pellets before extraction.

The prepared material is transported to the Main Extraction Section via an OILTEK Conveyor.

In former times, oil extraction was done exclusively with presses. In most oil mills, oil extraction is done with expellers as pre extraction before solvent extraction or as direct press extraction. Oil Mills are used for high oil content seeds like sunflower, rapeseed, castor, sheanut, copra, mango kernels etc… In smaller capacity plants, it is mostly used as direct extraction but as the capacity increases, oil mills are used for pre extraction.

If oil mill is used as pre extraction method, then the expelled cakes should be cooled in an  Cooler before entering the extraction section.
Veendeep supplies the best quality Oil Mill machinery at very competitive prices.

Pre-pressing 

For larger capacities, Oil Mill is used for pre-pressing where the initial oil is extracted by mechanical pressing and then the pre-pressed cake is sent to the Solvent Extraction Plant

Full-Pressing 

Smaller capacity plants use Oil Mills. These Mills work on the principle of  mechanical extraction and extracts oil from the seeds. Seeds which have high oil content, double pressing should be incorporated for maximum yield.

Veendeep specialises in Oil Mills for Sunflower seeds,Rape Seeds and Castor Seeds which gives the maximum output of the highest quality in accordance to International Quality Standards.

The process of fractionation consists of the separation of the liquid part (olein) from the solid part (stearin). In principle the process is very simple, involving:

• Keeping the fat at a controlled temperature to allow crystallization.
• Separate the formed crystals

Veendeep has adopted the dry fractionation process operating batch wise, as opposed to centrifugal separation with the aid of detergents or solvent fractionation. With this process oil is kept at a controlled temperature in large tanks with slow stirrers. Crystals form and build into aggregates of several millimetres in diameter. The slurry is pumped through a membrane-filter press for separation of the olein and stearin fraction.

The stearin cake obtained from the membrane filter press is melted in the stearin-melting tank below the press, which also acts as a stearin intermediate tank, prior to storage or packaging.