Mehraein Ghasemi; Reza Shokrani; Javad Keramat
Abstract
Oil is a strategic product in our country, Iran. The amount of importing this product is considerable, and therefore, any attempt to produce crude oil in our country in a way that competes with the foreign counterparts, with regard to both quality and production cost is considered important. This study ...
Read More
Oil is a strategic product in our country, Iran. The amount of importing this product is considerable, and therefore, any attempt to produce crude oil in our country in a way that competes with the foreign counterparts, with regard to both quality and production cost is considered important. This study addresses the effect of oil seeds preparation step on quality of crude oil, which is extracted by solvent in an industrial scale. and also point to the details of this procedure and the working state of the equipments. The quality parameters which were addressed in this research are the amount of Phosphorus, Free fatty acids, and Peroxide value. The oil seed used in this research was imported from Brazil. After cleaning, breaking, and cooking, the seeds were prepared by Flaker, Expander, and Press equipments. The Flakes (Solvent Extraction (SE)), collets (Expander Aid Solvent Extarction (ESE)), and Cake Press (Screw Press (SP)) were, at the end, sent to the Extractor to extract the oil by solvent. The oil obtained by these three methods went through quality tests. After comparing the three oil products obtained from the above mentioned methods, it was revealed that the oil produced by SE method had less phosphatide and less refining loss. On the other hand, the oil produced by ESE method had the best quality with regard to the peroxide value, and the oil produced by SP method had the best quality with regard to the free fatty acids. The significant difference of the results shows the importance of controlling the parameters of oil seed preparation in oil extraction plants. These results can be of benefit to the oil extraction industry in Iran.
