Crude palm oil refining methods and palm oil refining process flow chart

Crude palm oil, the crude palm oil can be obtained by expeller or palm oil extraction machine

Why crude palm oil need to be refined? What is palm oil refining ?

Because crude palm oil contains free acids (FFA), moisture, trace metals, and other impuries that limit its shelf life.So it is hard to introduce crude palm oil into the market. In order to get high quality palm oil, the crude palm oil need to be refined by palm oil refinery plant. Palm oil refining is aim to remove phospholipids, FFA, pigment, gums, waxes, off-flavor and other impurities in the crude palm oil . The main process of palm oil refining processes are: degumming & deacidification , decolorization and deodorization.

Chemical refining and physical refining of crude plam oil

During palm oil refining process, there are two refining methods can be used, they are chemical refining of palm oil and physical refining of palm oil. The main difference between physical refining and chemical refining of palm oil lies in the way that how to remove FFA. Chemical refining removes the FFA in the deacidification section while physical refining removes the FFA in the deodorization section.

Physical refining of palm oil is during the process of distillation to remove the free fatty acids, which is one stage of deodorization.

Chemical refining of palm oil removes the phosphatides (gums) in two steps--degumming and deacidification, or in one single process—neutralization. The chemical method is more suitable for oils with high phospholipid levels, like cottonseed oil which contains gossypol that can only be conveniently removed by alkali treatment.

So we should consider the characteristic of different crude edible oil, then choose to the best refining method. For the crude palm oil , we usually adopts physical refining to remove the FFA. Next i will introduce the palm oil refining process:

Palm oil refining process flow chart:

Batch type palm oil refining process flow chart

Palm oil refining process introduction: Degumming Section:This is the first step in palm oil refining and is also known as the Pretreatment Process. In the degumming process the gums are precipitated and separated.

Neutralizing Section :Every cooking oil consists certain amounts of free-fatty acids FFA's that increase the rancidity in oil and is harmful for human consumption. In neutralization, the FFA's are removed by reacting them with caustic soda- NaOH in the neutralizer at a certain temperature and performing the stirring.

Bleaching Section :The color pigments in the oil are removed in the bleaching process.

Deodorizing Section : This process is used to remove the odor from the oil. Every oil contains certain typical natural color. It is carried out under high temperature and vacuum systems. At the completion of the deodorization process, we get the deodorized-odorless cooking oil. After crude palm oil refining process, The palm oil refinery products is rbd palm oil and soaps. The refined palm oil can be sold directly or deep processed. If the refined palm oil need to be deep processed , the palm oil fractionation plant will be necessary. After palm oil fractionation process, we can get palm olein and palm stearin.

Palm oil refinery products( after palm oil extraction process, we can get crude palm oil, after palm oil refining process, we can get rbd palm oil, after palm oil fractionation process, we can get palm olein and palm stearin)

Our company is specialized in palm oil refinery plant. We can provide the palm oil refinery plant from 1 ton to 1000 tons. In general, batch type palm oil refinery plant is with capacity 1-20TPD; The semi-automatic palm oil refinery plant is suggested with capacity from 20-50TPD; And continuous palm oil refinery plant is used for capacity above 50TPD. Of course, this is just an option, not necessary. Our engineer can help you design the whole palm oil refinery plant according to your capacity and requirements. And we can offer palm oil refinery process flow chart, palm oil refinery plant layout design, palm oil refinery plant projects Installation training guide，etc.