Pretreatment and Conditioning

____Pretreatment & Conditioning________

Detailed Introduction

Manufacturing Process

Facts

Efficient design of equipment has direct influence on the quality and yields of oil and meals, as well as ensuring efficient functioning and maintenance of extraction equipment. Our government recognised inhouse R&D Centre has developed optimal treatment systems tailored to the individual characteristics of the oilseed to be processed.

These developments have been put to use in actual production conditions under the philosophy of "maximum profitability and quality at minimum cost", making them one of the best available in the international market.

Our pretreatment equipment comprises efficient seed cleaning units, hullers, hull separators, cracking roller mills, crushers, flaking roller mills, automatic cookers, screw presses, expanders and oil clarification equipment.

STORAGE

We manufacture storage facilities for all kinds of raw material and finished goods.

CLEANING

The first stage in the raw material handling line is the removal of all dust, lints, sticks, stems, leaves, sand, stones and other impurities.

Tramp iron pieces are removed by magnetic separators. When foreign particles like stones having the same size as the seeds need to be removed, special destoning machines are incorporated in the cleaning line.

DECORTICATION

Hulls are removed from the seeds to increase the protein content of the meal, to reduce its fibre content and to increase the effective capacity of the extraction equipment. Special decorticating and hull separating equipment is selected according to the type and nature of raw material to be decorticated. Low oil residue in the separated hulls is assured.

PRE-PRESSING

High oil content seeds (like Rapeseed, Sunflower Seed, Groundnuts etc.) are first pressed by mechanical as well as through an extruder expander in order to extract most of the oil prior to solvent extraction, which completes the oil leaching.

GRINDING, COOKING & FLAKING

The oilseeds are ground to grits and then cooked by steam to render the cell walls permeable to the flow of oil. The flaking process opens the cell walls and reduces the thickness of the grits to a minimum so that the surface exposed to and in contact with the solvent in the extractor is maximized, achieving highly efficient extraction.

EXPANDING

Another process for pretreatment of raw material for direct extraction is expanding. Rolled and conditioned raw material is compressed in the expander as in a screw press but no oil is released. The material is forced out of the machine under high pressure and leaves the die with sudden pressure release. On this discharge of the material to the atmosphere the oil "boils" to the surface with the steam which flashes out and makes the expanded collets have an oily, amorphous and sintered structure. This structure increases considerably the extractability of the material and results in higher efficiency of the desolventizing processes of the solvent extraction system.

High oil content seeds like Rapeseed, Sunflower Seeds etc. may be processed in an expander where some of the oil liberated is allowed to pass out of the expander through a special drainage cage provided in the expander before the material discharge. By this arrangement the mechanical screw presses are excluded from the processing line, and the expanded material having 20- 25% of oil content is transported directly to the solvent extraction plant.

Page Top