Why is palm oil refining process different from other vegetable oil refining process?

Due to the different features between palm oil and other vegetable oil, the refining process is different. Are you planning to build a palm oil refining plant? If yes, to know the difference of them can help you to judge the professional level of the palm oil refining machine supplier, and to build a cost-effective factory to produce good quality palm oil. The following description is based on our engineers' explanation. Hope it can help you.

Vegetable oil refining process flow chart(Chemical refining process)

Firstly, you should know that vegetable oil refining process usually contains four processes: degumming, deacidification, decolorization, deodorization. And the main difference between palm oil refining process and other vegetable oil refining process is in degumming and deacidification two processes.

The difference of degumming process: 

There are two methods in degumming process, water degumming method and dry degumming method. Because palm oil has less gums than other vegetable oil, dry degumming method is more suitable. Usually, the dry degumming method is to add some phosphoric acid first, and to remove the gums and pigments together with white clay in decolorization process. However, if the gums content is very high, like soybean oil, the water degumming method is mostly used.

Palm oil refining process flow chart(physical refining process)

The difference of deacidification process:

Deacidification process can be pided into chemical method and physical method. Palm oil has higher acid value than other vegetable oil, Doing engineers advise to use physical deacidification method in palm oil refining process. The physical deacidification is volatilizing the free fatty acid by high temperature under the vacuum state, and then use the vacuum pump to take it out. By this way, there is no chemical reaction and soapstock, just to remove the FFA(free fatty acid), so the oil loss is less, too.

But physical deacidification method is suitable for semi-continuous or full-continuous palm oil refining plant, at least 5tpd. If your input capacity is 1-2tpd, batch type palm oil refining plant is your best choice. Batch type palm oil refining plant is low cost, small footprint. Even though using chemical deacidification method, you can also get high quality RBD palm oil.

The palm oil refinery project built by Doing Company in different countries

Doing Company has built many palm oil refinery projects in different countries, so our engineers are rich experience in designing the palm oil process according to different customers' requirement. If you want to build a palm oil refining plant, please let us know your crude oil acid value and the input capacity you want.