Pressing processes

With many oil-bearing seeds and nuts, rendering will not liberate the oil from the cellular structures in which it is held . In these cases the cell walls are broken by grinding, flaking, rolling, or pressing under high pressures to liberate the oil. The general sequence of modern operations in pressing oilseeds and nuts is as follows: (1) the seeds are passed over magnetic separators to remove any stray bits of metal; (2) if necessary, the shells or hulls are removed; (3) the kernels or meats are converted to coarse meal by grinding them between grooved rollers or with special types of hammer mills; and (4) they are pressed in hydraulic or screw presses with or without preliminary heating, depending on the type of oil-bearing material and the quality of oil desired. Oil expressed without heating contains the least amount of impurities and is often of edible quality without refining or further processing. Such oils are known as cold-drawn, cold-pressed, or virgin oils. Pressing the coarse meal while it is heated removes more oil and also greater quantities of nonglyceride impurities such as phospholipids, colour bodies, and unsaponifiable matter. Such oil is more highly coloured than cold-pressed oils. Residual meals are concentrated sources of high-quality protein and are generally used in animal feeds.

Pressing machines

Many different mechanical devices have been used for pressing. The Romans developed a screw press, described by Pliny, for the production of olive oil. Centuries ago, the Chinese employed the same series of operations followed in modern pressing mills—namely, bruising or grinding the seeds in stone mills, heating the meal in open pans, and then pressing out the oil in a wedge press. The Dutch, or stamper, press invented in the 17th century was used almost exclusively in Europe for pressing oilseeds until the early part of the 19th century, when the hydraulic press was developed. The yield of oil from the hydraulic press was considerably higher than that from earlier processing methods because of the much higher applied pressures. In open presses, the ground seed material was confined in cloths of human hair or, less commonly, camel hair. Pressures on the cake varied from approximately 70 to 140 kilograms per square centimetre (1,000 to 2,000 pounds per square inch), and in the closed-type press, in which the oil-containing material was confined in a strong perforated steel cage during the pressing operation, pressures of approximately 400 kilograms per square centimetre or more were attained. Under ideal conditions the oil content of the hydraulic-press cake can be reduced to about 3 percent, but in practical operation a 5 percent level is average. The modern screw press replaced many of the hydraulic presses because it is a continuous process, has greater capacity, requires less labour, and will generally remove more oil. As ground seed is fed continuously into the mechanical press, a worm screw increases the pressure progressively as the material moves through a slotted barrel. Pressures from 700 to 2,100 kilograms per square centimetre are attained, and the oil is squeezed out through the slots, leaving a cake containing 3 to 3.5 percent oil under optimum processing and 4 to 5 percent oil under average conditions.

Processes

Cakes obtained by pressing operations still retain 3 to 15 percent of residual oil. When the value of the oil is considerably greater as oil than as a part of the meal, it is desirable to obtain more complete extraction with solvents. Modern commercial methods of solvent extraction use volatile purified hydrocarbons, especially the various grades of petroleum benzin (commonly known as petroleum ether, commercial hexane, or heptane). In large-scale operations, solvent extraction is a more economical means of recovering oil than is mechanical pressing. In the United States and increasingly in Europe, there are many instances of simple petroleum benzin extraction of seeds, mainly soybeans. For seeds or nuts containing a higher oil content than soybeans it became customary to press the material in screw presses to remove a large proportion of the oil before extraction. Since this prepressing also ruptures the cellular structures of oil-bearing materials, most of the residual oil is easily removed with solvents.

A typical extraction system consists of (1) cleaning to remove tramp iron, dirt, foreign weed seeds, and stones, (2) removing hulls or cortex in cracking, aspirating, or screening operations, (3) cracking or rough grinding the kernels, meats, or prepressed cake, (4) steaming (tempering or cooking) of the meats, (5) flaking the small pieces between smooth flaking rolls, (6) extracting the oil with solvent, (7) separating the meal, or marc, from the oil-solvent solution, called miscella, and (8) removing the solvent from both the miscella and the marc. The marc may be toasted or pelletized, or both, for use in animal feeds. Most extracted meals contain less than 1 percent of residual oil. The amount varies depending on the amount of prepressing, the type of material being extracted, and the efficiency of the extracting system.

Extractors

Solvent extraction was first practiced in Europe, using batch extractors for the recovery of additional oil from the residues obtained from mechanical pressing. The greater efficiency of solvent extraction encouraged direct application to oilseeds, and the batch extractor gradually gave way to continuous units in which fresh flakes are added continuously and subjected to a counterflow of solvent. One of the earliest continuous extractors, and a type still considered to be one of the best, was the Bollman or Hansa-Mühle unit from Germany, in which solvent percolates through oilseed flakes contained in perforated baskets moving on an endless chain. After the extraction cycle is complete, the baskets of extracted flakes are dumped automatically and then refilled with fresh flakes to initiate another cycle. Many extractor designs have been proposed, but only a few have found wide acceptance. In the DeSmet extractor, popular in Europe and in a number of developing countries, a bed of flakes on an endless horizontal traveling belt is extracted by solvent percolation. The Blaw-Knox Rotocell has become the most popular extractor in the huge American soybean industry. The flakes are conveyed into wedge-shaped segments of a large cylindrical vessel. Solvent percolating through the cells falls into the bottom of the extractor housing, where it is picked up by a series of pumps and recirculated countercurrent to the flakes.