Palm Oil
Palm oil is a versatile raw material which plays an important part in the food industry – in margarine, confectionery or ready meals, for example. Palm oil is also required for the production of detergents, soap, candles, cosmetics or technical fats. It is obtained from the fruits of the oil palm. The main producing countries – Malaysia, Indonesia, the Ivory Coast and South American countries – produce nonstop all year round. The systems for obtaining the oil have to be of a correspondingly robust design.
GEA Westfalia Separator developed the Westfalia Separator® ecod system for the crude oil process. It combines rugged engineering with outstanding product quality as well as a significant reduction in oil losses and fresh water requirement.
In the Westfalia Separator® ecod system, GEA Westfalia Separator has developed the most innovative process management currently available on the market.
The system dispenses with the addition of water for dilution. Large sedimentation tanks are no longer required. This considerably reduces process time, and energy consumption is also correspondingly lower. At the same time, the proportion of waste water is reduced to less than 20 percent related to the quantity of fruit processed. This is less than half the quantity produced in classic process management using nozzle separators or 3-phase decanters. This allows sedimentation tanks to be of much smaller dimensions.
Integrated process line from GEA Westfalia Separator for obtaining palm oil by the Westfalia Separator ecod system
The three main components of the system are an automatic sand removal system (multicyclone), a special Westfalia Separator® ecod decanter and a high-performance polishing separator.
The decanter system is capable of generating only two more phases from the crude oil: clean oil and an NOS / fruitwater mix which contains virtually 100 percent of the solids. A waste water phase like that occurring in the 3-phase decanter is eliminated. The special design of rotor allows the highly viscous crude oil to be separated in one process stage without the addition of water for dilution.
The oil obtained is then fed through a heating tank to the self-cleaning separator which removes any remaining solids from the palm oil. The oil is then dehydrated in a vacuum dryer and put into storage.
The slurry remaining in the decanter can be processed into marketable by-products such as fertilizers, for example.