Sunflower seeds are familiar to everyone, sunflower seeds commonly known as "guazi", Sunflower oil is a vegetable oil extracted from the kernel of sunflower seeds, the content of unsaturated fatty acids is more than 90%, the content of vitamin E in the oil exceeds is more than most vegetable oils, eating sunflower oil is beneficial to human health, in the market by the majority of consumers favor.

Sunflower seed is one of the four major oil crops in China, because it tastes delicious, morally lofty, non-greasy, and contains a large number of trace elements that cannot be synthesized by the human body, it is the leader in high-end vegetable oil. With the increasing health awareness of Chinese consumers, sunflower oil has gradually become the daily edible oil on our table, coupled with the quality control of oil in China, high-quality sunflower oil has a greater market influence in the market.

The oil produced by the sunflower oil extraction process is also called the leaching oil, which is the oil extraction with organic solvent. The leaching method is a sunflower oil production process in which the raw oil is soaked by solvent oil and extracted at high temperature to make the oil be extracted.

The "oil" extracted from the initial extraction is a mixture of organic solvents and fats, which can not be eaten, and can only be eaten after a series of refining processes (degumming, deacidification, dehydration, decolorization, deodorization, dewaxing and other chemical treatments). The sunflower oil extraction process can almost extract the entire oil in the oil seed, with relatively high economic benefits, and is a popular processing and extraction method in the modern oil industry. Following is the sunflower oil extraction process:

Sunflower oil leaching process:

(1) Oil leaching: the embryo or pre-pressed cake of the oil after pretreatment is sent to the extraction machine by the conveying equipment, and the concentrated mixed meal and wet meal are obtained after solvent leaching.

(2) Wet meal stripping drying: the meal unloaded from the leach contains 25% to 35% of the solvent, in order to recover these solvents and obtain better quality meal, heating can be used to evaporation the solvent.

(3) mixed oil evaporation stripping: evaporation is to vaporize a part of the solvent in the solution by heating, thereby speeding up the concentration of the solute in the solution, even if the volatile solvent and non-volatile solute separation process. Stripping is steam distillation, the principle is: mixed oil and water are not soluble, to the high boiling point of the concentrated mixed oil through the direct steam that requires pressure, while in the jacket of the equipment through indirect steam heating, so that the direct steam through the mixed oil will not condense. The evaporation and stripping of the oil mixture generally reduces the solvent content of the oil.

(4) Solvent vapor condensation recovery: the so-called condensation, that is, at the required temperature, the process of gas release heat into a liquid. Cooling refers to the process that the temperature of the hot fluid decreases after the release of heat but does not change the phase. The recovery of solvent vapor by condensation reduces the solvent loss in the leaching process.

(5) degumming: the insoluble impurities of oil not only affect the stability of oil, but also affect the process effect of oil refining and deep processing. In the process of alkali refining, grease will promote emulsification, increase operation difficulties, increase the consumption of refining and auxiliary agents, and reduce the quality of soap feet; In the bleaching process, the absorbent consumption was increased and the bleaching effect was reduced.

(6)  Deacidification: There is always a certain amount of free fatty acids in plant oils, and the amount depends on the quality of the oil. The immaturity of seeds and the high breakage of seeds are the reasons for the high acid value of oil, especially under the condition of high moisture, which is unfavorable to the preservation of oil, which will increase the free acid content and reduce the quality of oil, and worsen the edible quality of oil.

(7) Bleaching: The pigment composition in vegetable oil is complex, mainly including chlorophyll, carotene, flavonoid pigment, anthocyanidin, and the decomposition products of some sugars and proteins. Oil extraction is commonly used by adsorption bleaching. The principle of adsorption bleaching method is to use the adsorbent with strong adsorption power to adsorb pigments and other impurities in hot oil, and to remove the adsorbent pigments and impurities while filtering the adsorbent, so as to achieve the purpose of bleaching and purification.

(8) Deodorization: All kinds of vegetable oils have its own unique flavor and taste, after acid removal,bleaching of the oil will also have trace aldehydes, ketones, hydrocarbons, low molecular fat, glycerol oxide and white soil, residual solvent odor, remove these bad odor process called deodorization.

(9)  Dewaxing: Dewaxing is an important link to speed up the quality of cooking oil. The presence of wax mainly affects the palatability of oil, so the main purpose of dewaxing is to speed up the palatability of oil and speed up the sensory properties of oil such as transparency and brightness. The wax content of different oil products is different, and dewaxing is almost necessary for the following oil products (such as corn oil, rice bran oil, sunflower oil, cottonseed oil, etc.).

Although there are many methods of dewaxing such as: freezing crystallization method, surfactant method, cold polymerization method, electrostatic method, neutralization and winterization method. However, at present, the industrial production basically adopts the freezing crystallization method, and because of the different crystal properties of different oil products, the crystallization rate, temperature, time and filtration method of nutrients are also greatly different.

Sunflower oil extraction process:

(1) Advantages: relatively high oil yield, low cost, high economic benefits. Modern oil industry popular processing methods.

(2) Disadvantages: destroyed part of the nutritional composition, there is a trace of organic solvent residue (in accordance with national standards).

Oils extraction equipment for reference:

The leaching equipment may have some changes because of the different processing oils, but the general structure is the same, and the number of manufacturers on the market is large, the user's choice is very wide. Things have two sides, manufacturers choose a wide range, which also creates difficulties for the purchase.In fact, leaching equipment users should be more concerned about the actual production, as long as the production is stable and reliable, it is a good equipment, but the production of stable and reliable equipment is not easy to choose, Huatai machinery reminds the majority of users to refer to the following aspects :

(1) The purpose of the extraction equipment is to process edible oil. The more ideal leaching effect of the equipment can reduce the number of leaching, and ensure that one extraction can reduce the residual oil rate to a lower level, so that fewer leaching times can be used to save operating costs for users, and more profits can be realized.

(2) Sufficient stability is an advantage of leaching equipment. The investment of the leaching plant is huge, due to the large investment in the leaching equipment, only the leaching equipment has sufficient quality assurance, reliable manufacturing process, sufficient stability, low failure rate and long service life, it can be better used.

(3) Economy is an important element of purchase, although the user attaches great importance to the quality of the oil extraction equipment, however, under the premise of ensuring quality, the compression of investment costs is what the user is willing to see. When users buy, they should shop around and choose more cost-effective equipment.

(4) Service is the fundamental guarantee. No manufacturer can guarantee that the equipment can always run stably, and it is important to find a way to solve the problem. The end of the transaction does not mean the end of the service, and perfect after-sales service can solve problems for users and improve market credibility.