Soybean oil is rich in nutrients.Soybean is one of the main crops and important source of agriculture, Brazil is the second producer and export country in the world.
Cleaning and drying soybeans are the important steps in the soybean oil process. The soybean hulls need to be removed, because they would absorb the oil and reduce soy oil yield. The dehulling of soybean can be made by cracking, the soybeans and hulls, cracked soybeans can be separated by mechanical separation. Magnet selectors are used to separate the iron from soybeans. Flake soybean into thin pieces, easier for extraction and to dry the flaked pieces.
Soybean oil solvent extraction is widely used in soybean oil extraction under normal circumstances, oil produced by solvent extraction has good quality and lower production cost.
The extraction section includes add solvent, extraction, mixed oil, evaporation, steam, stripping, crude soybean oil. The wet meal goes through a desolventiser-toaster to remove hexane and inactivate enzyme inhibitors to improve nutritional value and digestibility of the meal.
The crude oil is then refined by three stages: water degumming, chemical refining and physical refining.
In water degumming, a sticky viscous oil-water emulsion or gum is removed by using water and centrifuging. Soy lecithin is obtained as a by-product of the degumming process. The chemical refining process removes free fatty acids . In physical refining, the oil is bleached and deodorized. Bleaching removes the yellow-orange carotenoid pigments and the green chlorophyll of the oil. Finally, deodorization removes the odorous substances through a form of physical distilling, the oil is subjected to high temperatures under a vacuum for a short period of time.
