What’s Oil Refining Process? ...
A Vegetable Oil Refinery Plant is used for removal of undesirable elements like free fatty acids (FFA), gums, phosphatides etc. from oil. Thus vegetable oil refining process improves the quality of edible oil and ensures color uniformity.
For refining the edible oil, there are three basic processes in the refinery. First process is neutralizing the oil in the neutralizer to remove the Free Fatty Acids (FFA) by adding caustic soda. Oil is heated up to about 60°C by thermic fluid coils and oil is stirred by stirrer. Then soap stock formed due to chemical reaction is allowed to settle at the bottom of the neutralizer from where it is taken out into soap pan.
Neutralized oil is drawn into the second vessel called bleacher where color of oil is removed by bleaching process with aid of chemicals such as carbon black and bleaching earth. Oil is generally heated up to 110°C by thermic fluid coils. Stirring is also continued. Bleaching process is done under vacuum.
Bleached oil then goes to the filter press where bleaching earth and chemicals are separated and clean bleached oil is then drawn to deodorizer where oil is heated above 110°C through thermic fluid coils and then live steam is given to the oil from the bottom steam nozzles and temperature of oil is raised up to 200 to 220°C through thermic fluid coils. Entire process is done under high vacuum. Thus smell is removed from the oil in the deodorizer. Then it goes to cooler where water circulating coils take away heat and oil is cooled. Again it goes to second filter press where completely refined and transparent color less oil is obtained.
Thermic Fluid Boiler, Vacuum Pump, Barometric Condenser, Catchalls, Steam Generator etc. play their role in the refining process. So these equipments are part of the refinery and connected with the vessels through pipelines.
The edible oil refinery can refine almost all types of oils. The refined oil quality depends on the type of crude oil and its chemical structure. So far, we have exported our refinery plants to 25 countries of the world.
