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TECHNOLOGY
LECTURES
III
(Crude Oil Production)
Basic approaches :
Mechanical Oil Extraction
- cold pressing means no heat applied
- hot pressing - external heat is applied
Solvent Extraction
- organic solvent (hexane, isopropyl alchool)
- supercritical solvent (carbondioxide)
Mechanical oil extraction
Mechanical oil extraction (expression) is a solid-
liquid phase seperation method which is applied
to cooked seed flakes.
knife
Cone shaped pressure
cage Main worm shaft
cake
Stell bars
Crude oil
The seeds enter the barrel and falls on the helical
pressure worm.During movement in the barell,
between worm and cage is gradually reduced and
the seed flakes are subjected to increasing
pressure.The cage is made of a number of special
stell bars which let liquids pass through. The oil
passes between the bars an flows out of the cage.
The cone moves along the shaft of the expeller and
the space between the worm and cone can be
regulated.This permits easy control of the
thichnesses of cakes and of the degree of pressure
to which the cooked flakes are subjected.
Screw Press
Shaft Arrangement--
Screw Press
Cage Arrangement—
French Press
Advantages and disadvantages of the
expeller process;
Expellers can be used with almost any kind of oilseeds and nuts. The
process is relatively simple and not capital-intensive. While the
smallest solvent extraction plant would have a processing capacity
of 100-200 tons per day, expellers are available for much smaller
capacities, from a few tons per day and up.
Screw press
Screw press
Crude oil
Solvent extraction
(solid-liquid extraction-leaching)
The lowest levels of residual oil after
pressing are 3-8%; exhaustive removal of
the oil present in the cake by mechanical
means alone is imposible. The residual oil
in cake , therefore, only be removed by a
different approach, this being solvent aided
extraction.
Single stage leaching
miscella V1
Solvents V0
Seed flakes +
solvents
flakes L0 Cake L1
L0 + V0 = L1 + V1
Ideal equilibrium
A+C A ; B+C
B B+C
A : inert solid
B : solvent
C : oil
Basic principles of solvent extraction: The
extraction of oil from oilseeds by means of
non-polar solvents is, basically, a process
of solid-liquid extraction. The transfer of oil
from the solid to the surrounding oil-
solvent solution ( miscella ) may be divided
into three steps:
* diffusion of the solvent into the solid
* dissolution of the oil droplets in the
solvent
* diffusion of the oil from the solid particle
to the surrounding liquid
Due to the very high solubility of the oil in
the commonly used solvents, the step of
dissolution is not a rate limiting factor. The
driving force in the diffusional processes
is, obviously, the gradient of oil
concentration in the direction of diffusion.
Due to the relative inertness of the non-oil
constituents of the oilseed, equilibrium is
reached when the concentration of oil in
the miscella within the pores of the solid is
equal to the concentration of oil in the free
miscella, outside the solid. These
considerations lead to a number of
practical conclusions:
* Since the rate-limiting process is diffusion, much
can be gained by reducing the size of the solid
particle. Yet, the raw material cannot be ground
to a fine powder, because this would impair the
flow of solvent around the particles and would
make the separation of the miscella from the
spent solid extremely difficult. The oilseeds are
rolled into thin flakes, thus reducing one
dimension to facilitate diffusion, without
impairing too much the flow of solvent through
the solid bed or contaminating the miscella with
an excessive quantity of fine solid particles.
The effect of flake thickness on the efficiency of
solvent extraction
Solution extraction
Diffussion extraction
* The rate of extraction can be increased
considerably by increasing the
temperature in the extractor. Higher
temperature means higher solubility of the
oil, higher diffusion coefficients and lower
miscella viscosity.
* An open, porous structure of the solid
material is preferable, because such a
structure facilitates diffusion as well as
percolation. A number of processes have
been proposed for increasing the porosity
of oilseeds before solvent extraction.
* Although most of the resistance to
mass transfer lies within the solid, the
rate of extraction can be increased
somewhat by providing agitation and
free flow in the liquid phase around
the solid particles. Too much agitation
is to be avoided, in order to prevent
extensive disintegration of the flakes.
Choice of solvents:
An ideal solvent for the extraction of oil from oil seeds should possess
the following properties:
* Good solubility of the oil.
* Poor solubility of non-oil components.
* High volatility (i.e. low boiling point), so that complete removal of
the solvent from the miscella and the meal by evaporation is
feasible and easy.
* Yet, the boiling point should not be too low, so that extraction can
be carried out at a somewhat high temperature to facilitate mass
transfer.
* Low viscosity.
* Low latent heat of evaporation, so that less energy is needed for
solvent recovery.
* Low specific heat, so that less energy is needed for keeping the
solvent and the miscella warm.
* The solvent should be chemically inert to oil and other
components of the seed flakes.
* Absolute absence of toxicity and carcinogenicity, for the solvent
and its residues.
* Non-inflammable, non-explosive.
* Non-corrosive
* Commercial availability in large quantities and low cost.
A typical commercial solvent for oil
extraction would have a boiling point
range (distillation range) of 65 to 70oC
and would consist mainly of six-carbon
alkanes, hence the name "hexane“ by
which these solvents are commonly
used in oil extraction.
solvent
cake
miscella
In continuous extraction, both the
oilseeds and the solvent are fed into
the extractor continuously. The
different available types are
characterized by their geometrical
configuration and the method by which
solids and solvents are moved one in
relation to the other, in counter-current
fashion.
Two different methods can be used to
bring the solvent to intimate contact with
the oilseed material:
percolation
immersion
In the percolation method, the solvent
trickles through a thick bed of flakes
without filling the void space completely.
A film of solvent flows rather rapidly
over the surface of the solid particles
and efficiently removes the oil which has
diffused from the inside to the surface.
This mode of contact is preferable
whenever the resistance to diffusion
inside the flake is relatively low (thin
flakes with large surface area, open
tissue structure).
In the immersion mode, the solid particles
are totally immersed in a slowly moving,
continuous phase of solvent. Immersion
works better with materials offering a
greater internal resistance to oil transfer
(thick particles, dense tissue structure).
Percolation type extractor
Belt extractors_(DE SMET extractor); The extractor
consists of a horizontal, sealed vessel in which a
slowly moving screen belt is installed. Flaked oil
seeds are fed on the belt by means of a feeding
hopper. A damper attached to the hopper outlet
acts as a feed regulating valve and maintains the
solids bed on the belt at constant height. This
height can be adjusted according to the expected
rate of percolation of the miscella through the bed.
Difficult percolation is compensated for by
lowering bed height. The throughput rate of the
extractor is adjusted by changing the belt speed.
There are no dividing baffles on the belt and
the solid bed is one continuous mass. Yet
the extractor is divided to distinct extraction
stages by the way in which the miscella
stream is advanced.
The solvent is introduced at the spent flake
discharge end. It is sprayed on the flakes,
percolates through the bed, giving the spent
flakes a last wash and removing some oil.
The resulting dilute micella is collected in a
sectional hopper underneath the belt, from
which it is pumped and sprayed again on
the flakes at the next section in the direction
opposite to belt movement. This process of
miscella collection, pumping and spraying
at the next section is repeated until the
miscella leaves the hopper at the head-end
of the extractor, carrying the highest
concentration of oil (heavy miscella).
The screen is washed with heavy miscella
at the head-end, just before the entrance
of fresh flakes, and then again with fresh
solvent, right after the discharge of spent
flakes.Washing of the screen is essential
to prevent clogging. Washing with full
miscella at the feed-end provides surface
lubrication and prevents adhesion of the
flakes to the surface of the screen. The
entire extractor vessel is maintained at a
slight negative pressure so as to prevent
leakage of solvent vapours to the
atmosphere.
Belt Extractor (DeSmet)
In this class of extractors, the flakes do not constitute a continuous mass but are
filled into separate, delimited elements (baskets) with perforated bottoms for
draining. The baskets can be moved vertically (bucket elevator extractors),
horizontally ( frame belt and sliding cell extractors), or can be rotated around a
vertical axis (roto-cell extractors). Vertical bucket-chain extractors are among the
first industrial solvent extractors constructed for continuous operation. Many are
still in operation but they are less frequently found in more recent installations.
Sliding cell extractor (Lurgi)
Roto-cell extractor
(Reflex extractor-DeSmet)
Rotocell extractor
Hildebrandt extractor
(immersion type)
Dehulling hulls
Flaking
Cooking
Oily cake
Crude oil
Cottonseed oil production
Cottoseed
Delinting lints
Dehulling hulls
Flaking
Cooking
Oily cake
Crude oil
Rapeseed oil production
Rape seed
Flaking
Cooking
Oily cake
Crude oil