Sunflower oil is a common vegetable oil, which is widely welcomed because of its high nutritional value and light taste. However, untreated sunflower oil may contain impurities and ingredients that are not suitable for human consumption, so it needs to be refined. The sunflower oil refinery process usually includes the following steps:

Remove impurities 

In the refining process, it is first necessary to remove impurities from raw oil. This step is mainly to remove solid impurities in oil by filtration or precipitation, such as sediment and plant residue. Impurity removal is an important basic step to ensure the quality of refined oil.

Degumming 

Degumming is to separate phospholipids and other colloid components from oil by heating and adding water or acidic solution. These phospholipids will affect the stability and transparency of oil, so they need to be removed. After degumming, the oil becomes more pure.

Deacidification

Deacidification is the removal of free fatty acids from oil by chemical or physical methods. This step can improve the quality of oil and reduce the possibility of rancidity. Commonly used methods include alkali refining and steam distillation.

Decolorization

Decolorization process is to remove pigments and other trace impurities in oil, so that sunflower oil presents a clear color. Adsorbent such as activated carbon or clay is usually used to complete decoloration.

Deodorization

Deodorization mainly removes the odor components in oil by high temperature steam distillation. This step not only improves the smell of oil, but also further improves the purity.

Dewaxing

Dewaxing mainly adopts low temperature crystallization or solvent crystallization to remove free wax from sunflower seed crude oil. This can prevent the oil from crystallizing and solidifying at low temperature, thus maintaining the flavor and texture required by the oil.

After the above steps, sunflower oil changed from raw material state to clear and transparent high-quality edible oil without peculiar smell. The refined sunflower oil not only has better taste, but also can better preserve nutrients, which provides a reliable choice for healthy diet.