Technological Advancement In Oil Mill Machinery

An oil mill machinery is designed to crush and grind seeds for the purpose of extracting oil from them. Oil-bearing seeds like cotton, cashew nut, peanuts, poppy seeds along with olives, avocado, walnuts and fruits of oil palm are pressed to extract the edible oils. Such oils are then used for cooking, biofuel or as a oleochemicals feedstock. The oil extracted from non edible seeds such as Soapnut, Castor bean and other are largely used in the production of biofuel and other lubricants. The remaining materials - press cakes or pomace, from which oil has been extracted, is used as a fertilizer or food items.

Oil Mill Machinery

The extraction of oil from seeds and plants crush provide an ideal platform to Indian economy to expand its wings of trade to the outer world. As oils are used in almost all industries and sectors. The food industry makes use of oils for cooking, health sector uses oils for producing medicines and ointments, cosmetic industry uses oils and so forth. Oils are also added to the fodder of animals, industrial products and household products.

Oil Mill Technology - Then & Now

In yesteryears, oil presses and mechanical oil expellers were used for extracting oil from oil-bearing seeds. These machines are capable of extracting oils from number of seeds and nuts including almonds, coconuts, groundnuts, walnuts along with rapeseeds, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds and many more. The bright side of these oil mill machines is being easy to operate, compact in size and less expensive than large expellers. Also, they require a small space for storage, which make them suitable for small business set up.

With the advancement in technology, the world has moved a step forward in manufacturing Oil Mill Machinery. Today's oil expellers has turned out to be an amalgamation of pace, technology and performance ? which promise to supply added benefits with the same budget. Owing the same, modern oil mill machines have revolutionized the way of extracting oil.

Oil Mill Machine

The oil extraction process is quite simple which requires a moderate level of investment for its setup and operation. The machines used in this process are also compact in size which operates on minimum processing cost and requires less maintenance over the years. Generally, oil mill makes use of two types of technologies (Pre-press & full press) for extracting oil from oil-bearing seeds.

• Full Pressing Machines: This method of oil extraction is mainly adopted by small companies that are bounded by capacity. In full pressing, oil-bearing seeds are pressed twice in order to extract the maximum oil out of them. Still, this process generates residual with high oil content in the cake. However, it is difficult to effectively remove the required oil content from cake that too without damaging the quality of oil and meal. As this process involves high temperature and tremendous pressure for extracting oil. Thus, solvent based extraction was introduced to make the oil extraction process effective.

• Pre-Press Machines: In this process the physical properties of oil-bearing seeds is altered including deformation of seed, oil separation followed by frictional heating and water evaporation. Pre-press machines make use of mechanical seed pressing mechanism and turn oil material in cakes for extracting oil. For further processing these cakes are then transferred to solvent extracting plants, where the oil is extracted from all sorts of seeds. At the same time, the oil cakes undergoes some chemical change due to the influence of temperature, microbe, moisture and so forth.

Pre-press machines have wide scope of application with a capacity of handling big process and thus are used by large capacity plants. The oil extracted through prepress machines are better in quality and texture than that of full-press and direct extraction. Also, the prepress machines are capable of reducing the power consumption and maintenance cost.