NEWS
Palm Oil Processing Plant
Palm oil extracted from palm fruits is widely used in cooking and food manufacturing industry all over the world. It contains rich vitamin A and vitamin E. The palm oil produced by palm oil processing plant can be used as edible oil, tallow oil and margarine. As a good material for food production, palm oil can be easily digested and absorbed by the body.
Palm oil processing in palm oil plant involves a series of process, including fresh palm fruit bunches reception, sterilization and threshing of palm bunches, digesting and pressing of palm fruits to get the crude palm oil, which need to be further purified and dried before storage. The palm oil processing equipment used for making palm oil mainly involves the sterilizer, digester, threshing machine, palm oil extraction machine, nut and fiber separator, etc.
Crude palm oil obtained from the palm oil plant would be further processed by palm oil refinery plant to remove the water, free fatty acids, odoriferous matter, phosphatides and other impurities from crude palm oil. The main operating process of palm oil refinery involves sedimentation/filtering, degumming, decolorization (bleaching), neutralization (removing free fatty acid) and deodorization.
Main process of palm oil processing plant
Sterilization: fresh palm fruit bunches are sterilized in the sterilizer with live steam for 90–120 minutes that palm fruits can be separated from palm brunches easily and become soft. It can prevent enzymatic decomposition and avoid increasing of free fatty acids, making palm fruits easily release from bunches.
Threshing: palm bunches after sterilization are sent to bucket elevator and elevated into the threshing machine to separate the fruits from the bunches by strong vibration. The bunch waste is incinerated and used as the fertilizer.
Digestion: the palm fruits need to be crushed in the digester before processing in palm oil extraction machine. It can release the palm oil in palm fruit through breaking down oil-bearing cells. The purpose for digestion is to break the oil cells to make palm oil extraction easier.
Pressing: two methods are mainly used for extracting palm oil from the digested material. One is mechanical presses called the 'dry’ method. The other called the ‘wet’ method uses hot water to leach out the oil.
Clarification: clarification in palm oil plant is to separate the palm oil from the impurities. Then, the recovered oil is purified in plate centrifuges and dried by continuous vacuum drier to make the moisture content of palm oil reduced to 0.1% and the purity of crude palm oil reach 90%.
Oil storage: the purified and dried palm oil is transferred to a tank for storage before dispatching from the plant. Oil storage tank is mainly used for storing crude palm oil during palm oil processing.
