For years, the palm oil industry has cherished a dream for continuous sterilization. All the fundamental operations in a mill can be carried out in a continuous manner except sterilization. The batch nature of the sterilization process introduces fluctuations not only in the quantity of material processed but also in the overall steam demand. The situation is made worse by the fact that about one-third of the steam generated in the mill is used for sterilization. Operations related to batch sterilization also absorb much of the process labour force in a mill. The use of steam at high pressure and intermittent pressure releases to achieve good sterilization complicates the problem of achieving continuous processing. In spite of the complications, a number of methods have been examined in the past, which will be reviewed in Part I of this paper.