Cottonseed Oil Refinery Plant Process
We are a global reputed manufacturer and exporter of Cottonseed Oil Refinery Plant with our manufacturing facilities in Ludhiana ( Punjab ), India.
The Cotton Seed Oil is the Oil extracted from cotton seeds which are obtained after removing cotton fiber, lint and hulls. The Kernel in the cotton seed contain oil. The Oil content on delinted seeds will be 15% to 18% and Dehulled Kernels will contain around 34% to 38% oil.
The Oil Mainly extracted through expellers followed by solvent extraction process. The tradional method of extraction of Oil is directly from cotton seeds evolved out of ginning process. The whole cotton seed oil contains gossypol and chlorophyll and also FFA. The Prolonged storage of seeds increases the FFA which will effect the quality of the Crude oil and also refined oil as well.
The Cotton seed oil dominated in the world market till second world war and also in the United states of America. China, India, USA, Pakistan and Uzbekistan are the largest producers of cotton seeds and cotton seed oil. Turkey, Brazil and Egypt also started growing cotton and becoming exporters of cotton seed oil.
There are number of factors that will makes vary the composition of cotton seed oil like Climate, growing region, variety of cotton, agronomics adopted and finally handling n storage of cotton and cotton seeds.
Cotton seed oil contains palmitic and stearic acid glyceride upto 2% to 3% of total fatty acid composition.
Cotton seed oil like other vegetable oils made up of triglycerides and also contains some non- glyceridic materials in minor quantities. The removal of non glyceride materials and making it suitable to have good color and appealing odour is called refining.
Cottonseed Oil Refinery Plant Steps
- Phosphoric Acid Treatment or Gum Conditioning
- Caustic Treatment or Neutralization
- Water Washing
- Vacuum Drying
- Bleaching
- Deodorisation
- Winterization for Cold Countries
The above are normal chemical refining process steps will be applicable in cotton seed oil refining.
However, due to bad storage conditions and high FFA Cotton seed oil with dark color will be re refined or double refined. In this case the Oil will be given two times caustic treatment to get the required quality of the refined oil.
Gum Conditioning or Phosphoric Acid Treatment
Crude oils will be treated with food grade phosphoric acid before giving custic treatment or Neutralization process. This will help us to condition high levels of phosphatides, to make it inactive of trace metals like magnesium and iron and also facilitate to get good color and appearance of Oil.
This will be carried our heating the oil to 60 to 65°C and adding 1Kg to 1.5Kg of phosphoric acid through dosing system as per the flow of the Oil proceeding for Gum conditioning. This mixture will be send to reaction vessel where the residence time will be fixed for 20 minutes prior to sending to Neutralization process.
Neutralization – Caustic Treatment – Refining
This is the second step of Refining process. This has three types of terminology. Caustic treatment, Neutralization of Oil and technically this step is refining. During this step the pre treated gum conditioned oil is mixed with specific concentration of caustic soda solution to neutralize the additional un reacted phosphoric acid and free fatty acids present in the oil.
The Oil is heated to 80 – 85°C and mixed with caustic soda solution. The mixture will be given specific time either long mix or short mix based on the crude oil quality in the reactor. Here the Free fatty acids are converted soap and it will be visible in the glass tube.
The soap will be separated at this point. The mixture will be send through centrifugal separator where the soap and oil will be separated. The heavy phase soap will be taken to soap tank, the neutral oil will collected in neutral oil tank.
Water Washing
After separation of soap from the oil, the neutral oil still contains some traces of soap. This stage the neutral oil is mixed 10% to 12% hot water with a short duration mixture and separated through the centrifuge. The soap traces will be removed. The neutral and washed oil will be send to tank. At this stage the oil temperature will be maintained at 85 – 90°C. The Neutral oil contains less than 50ppm of soap.
Vacuum Drying
The washed oil contains some particles and trace of moisture which will effect further operations. Usually this oil is dried under vacuum as the temperature of the oil already at 85°C will be dried under a Vacuum of 70mm to remove the moisture. The Final neutral oil will have a moisture of Less than 0.1%
Bleaching
This is one the important stage in total refining process. Where the oil is heated to 100°C to 105°C and mixed with Bleaching earth chemical ( Acid activated clay) and also activated carbon in a vessel under vacuum at 70 mm hg where the stirring continues for specific designated time and then filtered the oil to remove the clay and carbon. At this stage the color pigments, and traces of soap PPM will be eliminated and the oil will be bleached and color reduction takes place. The filtered oil again send through the polish filters to obtain clear bleached oil.
Deodorization
This is the final step in refining process. The edible oils and fats retain undesirable odor and flavor after refining and bleaching. These constituents are eliminated at this stage. Deodorization is basically a vacuum-steam distillation process operated at elevated temperatures to remove FFA and other volatile odoriferous components that cause the undesirable flavor sand odors.
Additional deodorization benefits include heat bleaching to destroy carotenoid pigments, pesticide removal, and cyclopropenoid fatty acid reduction to a negligible level, all of which ensure oil purity. Deodorization is the last major processing step where flavor, odor, and many of the other qualities of an edible fat and oil product can be controlled. The deodorization will be operated at 250°C under 2 torr absolute vacuum to attain the results.
The deodorized oil at high temperature will be used to exchange the heat energy with incoming oil to the system and further cooled to 45°C and allowed to pass through the polish filters and send to the Final refined oil storage tank.
Winterization for Cold Countries
After refining of cotton seed oil winterization will be done for cold countries. As explained earlier there are 2 to 3% of Palmitic and stearic acid glycerides present in the cotton seed oil. During prolonged cooling or cold countries like USA, Europe and Russia it was observed a thin layer settlement at the bottom to the melting point of saturated glycerides.
This settling will removed by winterization process. Where the oil is cooled to 6°C to have perfect crystallization of saturated fat and then filtered through horizontal Pressure leaf filters to remove the solid fat content.
This step is optional hot countries like India doesn’t required this process as no settlement will be observed because of high room temperature. However, the current modern super market are maintaining lower temperature in their shop flours and some times may be observed if the product kept prolonged duration at that temperature.
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