EXTRACTION RATE – PALM OIL ENGINEERING BULLETIN

Improving mill oil extraction rate under the Malaysian National Key Economic Area

mpob_admin — Sun, 29 Mar 2020 17:13:36 +0000

Increasing oil extraction rate (OER) to 23% by 2020 is the aim of the fourth Entry Point Project (EPP) under the palm oil National Key Economic Area (NKEA). The national OER over the years have not made significant improvements due to the inconsistent quality of fresh fruit bunches (FFB) supplied to the mills coupled with inefficient machinery installed in some old mills that had expanded but not their machinery resulting in high oil losses during operation. Several strategies were designed to ensure that the objective of NKEA is achievable. Now close monitoring of FFB quality is being implemented by adopting one mill one enforcement officer policy. As for the oil loss, strict protocol on managing oil loss at mill should be the basis for gauging oil loss. The strategies put forward by the NKEA Laboratory is a testimony to a joint understanding between the policy-maker (government) and the industry.

Mongana basic: part 9

mpob_admin — Sun, 29 Mar 2020 17:14:12 +0000

The extraction process employing centrifuge and the press need large amounts of mechanical power but the wet process uses water for the removal of oil. At first (1922), the aim of the process was to separate completely the mesocarp of the fruit in order to obtain clean nuts because at that time the separation of the cake produced by the dry process into fibre and nuts was not well established.

Mongana basic: part 8

mpob_admin — Sun, 29 Mar 2020 17:14:12 +0000

After centrifugal extraction of the digested mash, the fibre contains 13% to 25% oil on dry matter and 45% to 55% of moisture. The percentage of residual oil in fibre is still too high amounting to 8% to 18% of the total oil. If the fibre is subjected to a pressure of 50 bar the residual oil can be further brought down to 8% – 9%. The extracted crude oil is very thick laden with solids. It contains approximately 20% oil. With centrifugal separation, only 80% to 85% of the oil can be separated due to the high solid content. The residual oil remained attached to cellular debris.

Mongana basic: 7 – extraction by non-continuous press

mpob_admin — Sun, 29 Mar 2020 17:14:19 +0000

This method of pressing was tried out in a revolving press capable of exerting a pressure of about 97 bar (100 kg cm^-2) on the cake. The cage had a height of 1 m and a diameter of 0.520 m having a capacity of 212 litres.

Mongana basics: 6 – factors affecting nut breakage in press cake

mpob_admin — Sun, 29 Mar 2020 17:14:19 +0000

The fruits from palm grove bunch cannot be processed in a continuous press because of the insufficient fibrous material in the bunch. If an attempt is made to treat the fruit in a screw press in such a manner as to obtain satisfactory oil extraction, a portion of the nuts gets crushed thus making up for the fibre deficiency.

Mongana basics: 5 – continuous screw press extraction

mpob_admin — Sun, 29 Mar 2020 17:14:19 +0000

This system of extraction was tried out on five different presses. All were screw presses but three of them had coaxial screws revolving on opposite directions. The other two had parallel screws. The capacity of the presses ranged from 1.3 to 9.6 of digested mash per hour (corresponding to 2 to 14 t FFB hr^-1). The power consumption varied from 2.2 to 11.2 kW.

Mongana basics: 4 – extraction process

mpob_admin — Sun, 29 Mar 2020 17:14:26 +0000

The extraction process can be generally classified under two groups: (a) dry extraction process, and (b) wet extraction process.