Vegetable Oil Refining

A) What is Refining?

The crude oil obtained either from expellers or solvent extraction plant contains impurities, which must be removed to make the oil edible, more palatable and stable against rancidity upon storage. The process of removing these impurities is called refining.

B) Impurities present in the oil:

1. Gums: Gums are phospholipids. There are two types of gums present, hydratable and non-hydratable. Hydratable gums are removed during degumming steps.

2. Hydrolysis Products Of Oils: Like Diglycerides and monoglycerides and free fatty acids. These are removed during neutralisation step.

3. Proteineous Matter, Carbohydrates, Resins: These are removed during neutralisation step.

4. Colouring Matter: Pigments such as chlorophyll (green colour) carotene (red colour), anthophyll (yellow colour) and gossypol (orange colour). These colour bodies which impart distinct colour to the oil are removed during neutralising and bleaching steps.

5. Odour-causing Chemicals: They are generally present in small quantities but their presence imparts strong, sometimes objectionable odour to the oil. These substances are volatile in nature and removed by deodorisation step.

6. Waxes: Some oils like sunflower contains appreciable amounts of waxes. Waxes are high melting esters of fatty alcohol with long chain fatty acids. These are removed by dewaxing step.

C) Refining Steps:

1. Degumming and Neutralization:

2. Bleaching as the name suggest is an operation to remove colouring matter present in the oil.

3. Deodorisation: Every vegetable oil has its own distinctive natural odour. During Neutralisation and Bleaching operation unpleasant odour is incorporated to the oil. It is therefore essential to remove this odour. The process is termed as Deodorisation.

D) Quality Control & Process Efficiency:

The process offered by TROIKA is such that the final quality of refined oil is automatically attained with minimum human effort. Lowest refining losses, such as steam, power and water, lowest consumption of chemicals and minimum operating personnel are salient features of TROIKA refining plants. TROIKA the technocrats to vegetable oil industry since 1971 have supplied equipment at more than 260 installation spread over Twenty Five countries. Whether for oil milling plants, Solvent Extraction plants or Refining plants or Hydrogenation plants you can always count on TROIKA.