3. 1 General processing description

Research and development work in many disciplines – biochemistry, chemical and mechanical engineering – and the establishment of plantations, which provided the opportunity for large-scale fully mechanised processing, resulted in the evolution of a sequence of processing steps designed to extract, from a harvested oil palm bunch, a high yield of a product of acceptable quality for the international edible oil trade. The oil winning process, in summary, involves the reception of fresh fruit bunches from the plantations, sterilizing and threshing of the bunches to free the palm fruit, mashing the fruit and pressing out the crude palm oil. The crude oil is further treated to purify and dry it for storage and export.

Large-scale plants, featuring all stages required to produce palm oil to international standards, are generally handling from 3 to 60 tonnes of FFB/hr. The large installations have mechanical handling systems (bucket and screw conveyers, pumps and pipelines) and operate continuously, depending on the availability of FFB. Boilers, fuelled by fibre and shell, produce superheated steam, used to generate electricity through turbine generators. The lower pressure steam from the turbine is used for heating purposes throughout the factory. Most processing operations are automatically controlled and routine sampling and analysis by process control laboratories ensure smooth, efficient operation. Although such large installations are capital intensive, extraction rates of 23 – 24 percent palm oil per bunch can be achieved from good quality Tenera.

Conversion of crude palm oil to refined oil involves removal of the products of hydrolysis and oxidation, colour and flavour. After refining, the oil may be separated (fractionated) into liquid and solid phases by thermo-mechanical means (controlled cooling, crystallization, and filtering), and the liquid fraction (olein) is used extensively as a liquid cooking oil in tropical climates, competing successfully with the more expensive groundnut, corn, and sunflower oils.

Extraction of oil from the palm kernels is generally separate from palm oil extraction, and will often be carried out in mills that process other oilseeds (such as groundnuts, rapeseed, cottonseed, shea nuts or copra). The stages in this process comprise grinding the kernels into small particles, heating (cooking), and extracting the oil using an oilseed expeller or petroleum-derived solvent. The oil then requires clarification in a filter press or by sedimentation. Extraction is a well-established industry, with large numbers of international manufacturers able to offer equipment that can process from 10 kg to several tonnes per hour.

Alongside the development of these large-scale fully mechanised oil palm mills and their installation in plantations supplying the international edible oil refining industry, small-scale village and artisanal processing has continued in Africa. Ventures range in throughput from a few hundred kilograms up to 8 tonnes FFB per day and supply crude oil to the domestic market.

Efforts to mechanise and improve traditional manual procedures have been undertaken by research bodies, development agencies, and private sector engineering companies, but these activities have been piecemeal and uncoordinated. They have generally concentrated on removing the tedium and drudgery from the mashing or pounding stage (digestion), and improving the efficiency of oil extraction. Small mechanical, motorised digesters (mainly scaled-down but unheated versions of the large-scale units described above), have been developed in most oil palm cultivating African countries.

Palm oil processors of all sizes go through these unit operational stages. They differ in the level of mechanisation of each unit operation and the interconnecting materials transfer mechanisms that make the system batch or continuous. The scale of operations differs at the level of process and product quality control that may be achieved by the method of mechanisation adopted. The technical terms referred to in the diagram above will be described later.

The general flow diagram is as follows:

PALM OIL PROCESSING UNIT OPERATIONS

In the early stages of fruit formation, the oil content of the fruit is very low. As the fruit approaches maturity the formation of oil increases rapidly to about 50 percent of mesocarp weigh. In a fresh ripe, un-bruised fruit the free fatty acid (FFA) content of the oil is below 0.3 percent. However, in the ripe fruit the exocarp becomes soft and is more easily attacked by lipolytic enzymes, especially at the base when the fruit becomes detached from the bunch. The enzymatic attack results in an increase in the FFA of the oil through hydrolysis. Research has shown that if the fruit is bruised, the FFA in the damaged part of the fruit increases rapidly to 60 percent in an hour. There is therefore great variation in the composition and quality within the bunch, depending on how much the bunch has been bruised.

Harvesting involves the cutting of the bunch from the tree and allowing it to fall to the ground by gravity. Fruits may be damaged in the process of pruning palm fronds to expose the bunch base to facilitate bunch cutting. As the bunch (weighing about 25 kg) falls to the ground the impact bruises the fruit. During loading and unloading of bunches into and out of transport containers there are further opportunities for the fruit to be bruised.

In Africa most bunches are conveyed to the processing site in baskets carried on the head. To dismount the load, the tendency is to dump contents of the basket onto the ground. This results in more bruises. Sometimes trucks and push carts, unable to set bunches down gently, convey the cargo from the villages to the processing site. Again, tumbling the fruit bunches from the carriers is rough, resulting in bruising of the soft exocarp. In any case care should be exercised in handling the fruit to avoid excessive bruising.

One answer to the many ways in which harvesting, transportation and handling of bunches can cause fruit to be damaged is to process the fruit as early as possible after harvest, say within 48 hours. However the author believes it is better to leave the fruit to ferment for a few days before processing. Connoisseurs of good edible palm oil know that the increased FFA only adds ‘bite’ to the oil flavour. At worst, the high FFA content oil has good laxative effects. The free fatty acid content is not a quality issue for those who consume the crude oil directly, although it is for oil refiners, who have a problem with neutralization of high FFA content palm oil.

3.1.1 Bunch reception

Fresh fruit arrives from the field as bunches or loose fruit. The fresh fruit is normally emptied into wooden boxes suitable for weighing on a scale so that quantities of fruit arriving at the processing site may be checked. Large installations use weighbridges to weigh materials in trucks.

The quality standard achieved is initially dependent on the quality of bunches arriving at the mill. The mill cannot improve upon this quality but can prevent or minimise further deterioration.

The field factors that affect the composition and final quality of palm oil are genetic, age of the tree, agronomic, environmental, harvesting technique, handling and transport. Many of these factors are beyond the control of a small-scale processor. Perhaps some control may be exercised over harvesting technique as well as post-harvest transport and handling.

3.1.2 Threshing (removal of fruit from the bunches)

The fresh fruit bunch consists of fruit embedded in spikelets growing on a main stem. Manual threshing is achieved by cutting the fruit-laden spikelets from the bunch stem with an axe or machete and then separating the fruit from the spikelets by hand. Children and the elderly in the village earn income as casual labourers performing this activity at the factory site.

In a mechanised system a rotating drum or fixed drum equipped with rotary beater bars detach the fruit from the bunch, leaving the spikelets on the stem (Fig. 3).

Most small-scale processors do not have the capacity to generate steam for sterilization. Therefore, the threshed fruits are cooked in water. Whole bunches which include spikelets absorb a lot of water in the cooking process. High-pressure steam is more effective in heating bunches without losing much water. Therefore, most small-scale operations thresh bunches before the fruits are cooked, while high-pressure sterilization systems thresh bunches after heating to loosen the fruits.

Small-scale operators use the bunch waste (empty bunches) as cooking fuel. In larger mills the bunch waste is incinerated and the ash, a rich source of potassium, is returned to the plantation as fertilizer.

3.1.3 Sterilization of bunches

Sterilization or cooking means the use of high-temperature wet-heat treatment of loose fruit. Cooking normally uses hot water; sterilization uses pressurized steam. The cooking action serves several purposes.

· Heat treatment destroys oil-splitting enzymes and arrests hydrolysis and autoxidation.

· For large-scale installations, where bunches are cooked whole, the wet heat weakens the fruit stem and makes it easy to remove the fruit from bunches on shaking or tumbling in the threshing machine.

· Heat helps to solidify proteins in which the oil-bearing cells are microscopically dispersed. The protein solidification (coagulation) allows the oil-bearing cells to come together and flow more easily on application of pressure.

· Fruit cooking weakens the pulp structure, softening it and making it easier to detach the fibrous material and its contents during the digestion process. The high heat is enough to partially disrupt the oil-containing cells in the mesocarp and permits oil to be released more readily.

· The moisture introduced by the steam acts chemically to break down gums and resins. The gums and resins cause the oil to foam during frying. Some of the gums and resins are soluble in water. Others can be made soluble in water, when broken down by wet steam (hydrolysis), so that they can be removed during oil clarification. Starches present in the fruit are hydrolyzed and removed in this way.

· When high-pressure steam is used for sterilization, the heat causes the moisture in the nuts to expand. When the pressure is reduced the contraction of the nut leads to the detachment of the kernel from the shell wall, thus loosening the kernels within their shells. The detachment of the kernel from the shell wall greatly facilitates later nut cracking operations. From the foregoing, it is obvious that sterilization (cooking) is one of the most important operations in oil processing, ensuring the success of several other phases.

· However, during sterilization it is important to ensure evacuation of air from the sterilizer. Air not only acts as a barrier to heat transfer, but oil oxidation increases considerably at high temperatures; hence oxidation risks are high during sterilization. Over-sterilization can also lead to poor bleach ability of the resultant oil. Sterilization is also the chief factor responsible for the discolouration of palm kernels, leading to poor bleach ability of the extracted oil and reduction of the protein value of the press cake.

Fig. 3 Bunch thresher (Centre de Formation Technique Steinmetz-Benin)

Fig. 4 Fruit sterilizer (Centre de Formation Technique Steinmetz-Benin)

3.1.4 Digestion of the fruit

Digestion is the process of releasing the palm oil in the fruit through the rupture or breaking down of the oil-bearing cells. The digester commonly used consists of a steam-heated cylindrical vessel fitted with a central rotating shaft carrying a number of beater (stirring) arms. Through the action of the rotating beater arms the fruit is pounded. Pounding, or digesting the fruit at high temperature, helps to reduce the viscosity of the oil, destroys the fruits’ outer covering (exocarp), and completes the disruption of the oil cells already begun in the sterilization phase. Unfortunately, for reasons related to cost and maintenance, most small-scale digesters do not have the heat insulation and steam injections that help to maintain their contents at elevated temperatures during this operation.

Contamination from iron is greatest during digestion when the highest rate of metal wear is encountered in the milling process. Iron contamination increases the risk of oil oxidation and the onset of oil rancidity.

3.1.5 Pressing (Extracting the palm oil)

There are two distinct methods of extracting oil from the digested material. One system uses mechanical presses and is called the ‘dry’ method. The other called the ‘wet’ method uses hot water to leach out the oil.

In the ‘dry’ method the objective of the extraction stage is to squeeze the oil out of a mixture of oil, moisture, fibre and nuts by applying mechanical pressure on the digested mash. There are a large number of different types of presses but the principle of operation is similar for each. The presses may be designed for batch (small amounts of material operated upon for a time period) or continuous operations.

3.1.5.1 Batch presses

In batch operations, material is placed in a heavy metal ‘cage’ and a metal plunger is used to press the material. The main differences in batch press designs are as follows: a) the method used to move the plunger and apply the pressure; b) the amount of pressure in the press; and c) the size of the cage.

The plunger can be moved manually or by a motor. The motorised method is faster but more expensive.

Different designs use either a screw thread (spindle press) (Fig. 4, 5, 6) or a hydraulic system (hydraulic press) (Fig. 7, 8, 9) to move the plunger. Higher pressures may be attained using the hydraulic system but care should be taken to ensure that poisonous hydraulic fluid does not contact the oil or raw material. Hydraulic fluid can absorb moisture from the air and lose its effectiveness and the plungers wear out and need frequent replacement. Spindle press screw threads are made from hard steel and held by softer steel nuts so that the nuts wear out faster than the screw. These are easier and cheaper to replace than the screw.

The size of the cage varies from 5 kg to 30 kg with an average size of 15 kg. The pressure should be increased gradually to allow time for the oil to escape. If the depth of material is too great, oil will be trapped in the centre. To prevent this, heavy plates’ can be inserted into the raw material. The production rate of batch presses depends on the size of the cage and the time needed to fill, press and empty each batch.

Hydraulic presses are faster than spindle screw types and powered presses are faster than manual types. Some types of manual press require considerable effort to operate and do not alleviate drudgery.

3.1.5.2 Continuous systems

The early centrifuges and hydraulic presses have now given way to specially designed screw-presses similar to those used for other oilseeds. These consist of a cylindrical perforated cage through which runs a closely fitting screw. Digested fruit is continuously conveyed through the cage towards an outlet restricted by a cone, which creates the pressure to expel the oil through the cage perforations (drilled holes). Oil-bearing cells that are not ruptured in the digester will remain unopened if a hydraulic or centrifugal extraction system is employed. Screw presses, due to the turbulence and kneading action exerted on the fruit mass in the press cage, can effectively break open the unopened oil cells and release more oil. These presses act as an additional digester and are efficient in oil extraction.

Moderate metal wear occurs during the pressing operation, creating a source of iron contamination. The rate of wear depends on the type of press, method of pressing, nut-to-fibre ratio, etc. High pressing pressures are reported to have an adverse effect on the bleach ability and oxidative conservation of the extracted oil.

3.1.6 Clarification and drying of oil

The main point of clarification is to separate the oil from its entrained impurities. The fluid coming out of the press is a mixture of palm oil, water, cell debris, fibrous material and ‘non-oily solids’. Because of the non-oily solids the mixture is very thick (viscous). Hot water is therefore added to the press output mixture to thin it. The dilution (addition of water) provides a barrier causing the heavy solids to fall to the bottom of the container while the lighter oil droplets flow through the watery mixture to the top when heat is applied to break the emulsion (oil suspended in water with the aid of gums and resins). Water is added in a ratio of 3:1.

The diluted mixture is passed through a screen to remove coarse fibre. The screened mixture is boiled from one or two hours and then allowed to settle by gravity in the large tank so that the palm oil, being lighter than water, will separate and rise to the top. The clear oil is decanted into a reception tank. This clarified oil still contains traces of water and dirt. To prevent increasing FFA through autocatalytic hydrolysis of the oil, the moisture content of the oil must be reduced to 0.15 to 0.25 percent. Re-heating the decanted oil in a cooking pot and carefully skimming off the dried oil from any engrained dirt removes any residual moisture. Continuous clarifiers consist of three compartments to treat the crude mixture, dry decanted oil and hold finished oil in an outer shell as a heat exchanger.