Design of a physical purification system for locally pressed vegetable oil.

Abstract

Vegetable oils find a wide variety of uses in consumer products including use as. food additives, lubricants. solvents and coating additives. Most applications require refined vegetable oil •that is essentially colorless to light yellow and free from insoluble material. The production of refined oil is only done at Commercial level which too much labour, energy and skills to operate the system which cannot be achieved by the local people in our societies, Since there is high production of vegetable oil crops and also. high demand for purified vegetable oil on the market, this project is aimed at the development of an efficient vegetable oil purification system which is cost effective and can be- operated locally using available biomass energy and can bridge the gap between the increasing demand and low production rate yet the potential of high production is available. The choice the design of the system was dependent on a number of? factors that were considered' and these included social considerations such as political and legal issues, reliability and availability of labour. level of technical support and available technology, available local materials and energy sources, and two, operating -condition considerations and these included degumming temperature and pressures. Steam temperatures and pressure, oil density and processing required operational times, and third, economic considerations such as the minimization of.net costs, cash flows, of resources. future operation and maintenance To achieve this, data Was gathered. through Extensive discussions and consultations with colleagues and -resourceful individuals in the field were used during the design. Also technical consultations and discussions with .my supervisors Were key inputs in this project together with technical support from the vegetable oil processing industries in Uganda. A cheap physical oil purification system was designed, constructed and then tested for performance.