Refining system for edible fats and oils with static mixer

Abstract

Crude edible fats and oils contain relatively small and variable amounts of nonglyceride impurities. Some of the impurities have an effect on the oil quality for food uses and thus need to be removed. Refining frees the triglycerides from undersirable impurities, principally free fatty acids, phosphatides, and other minor constituents. To date, worldwide commercial refining systems include physical refining, miscella refining, the Zenith process and alkali refining. In this study, Static Mixer is used for alkali refining to reduce the refining loss. Static Mixer is a continuous, inline mixer, which, with no moving parts, completely mixes any materials. In this system, \%RL and \%FFA is reduced to 1.7\%-1.4\% and 0.04\% as the number of element and flow rate of reactants are increased. The high refining efficiency and low energy loss by using the advantages of Static Mixer and the methods to reduce \%RL was studied.