Wednesday, April 28, 2010

How to make refined oil from vegetable oil?

I'm guessing you are asking how to make BIODIESEL from vegetable oil. Here is my answer to that:





The process is quite simple. Alchohol and vegetable oil or some other similar fat are mixed with the catalyst. It can be used animal fats or vegetable oils. The alchohol can be methanol or ethanol. Methanol is generally cheaper since it is made in industrial quantities from petroleum. Sodium hydroxide (aka lye or caustic soda) or potassium hydroxide are mixed in as the catalyst.





1. Methanol and sodium hydroxide are combined making sodium methoxide.


2. Sodium methoxide is mixed and stirred with vegetable oil (trigycerides). The oil molecules break apart and this produces methylesters and glycerol. The glycerol and catalyst will settle to the bottom as they are both denser than the methylesters. The methylester is drained off after the reaction is complete, about 8 hours.


3. The methylester (biodiesel) is washed by mixing it with water. The water dissolves any traces of the catalyst and the alchohol. After settling for a few days the water can be drained from the bottom of the tank.


The glycerol can be filtered and purified as well. It can be burnt as fuel, or it makes a powerful degreaser (it is already almost soap) and can be made into high quality soap.





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If your question is actually how to REFINE CRUDE VEGETABLE OIL into refined vegetable oil, then here are the steps:


1. Oil extraction from seeds using pressing, solvents, or both (e.g. high quality virgin olive oil is pressed, while lower quality pomace uses solvents to extract)


2. oil refiining: the crude vegetable oil is mixed with sodium hydroxide which removes the free fatty acids by forming soap


3. bleaching: this removes pigments by adding a 'bleaching clay' and then filtering the clay


4. deoderization: this removes volatile compounds and is often done by heating and distillation


5. fractional crystallization: this is separation of solid fats by allowing the oil to solidify at cooler temperautes


6. winterization: often some oils must have the fats which solidfy at low room temperatures removed. The oil is cooled and the solids filtered out.


7. hydrogenation: this binds hydrogen to the unsaturated fatty acids and prevents later oxidation and can be used to make the oil solid


8. texturing: this is a process where cooled fats are whipped to add some air and improve the texture and appearance, used for shortening


http://www.markets.duke.edu/student_it/s鈥?/a>How to make refined oil from vegetable oil?
Umm... technically vegetable oil has already been refined. If you've got a diesel engine, you can run it on vegetable oil. You might need to make some minor adjustments to the engines, but it's entirely possible.How to make refined oil from vegetable oil?
just to add, you can also physicaly refine vegetable oil, not by adding naoh, but by steam destilling of the ffa (free fatty acids). bleaching and deodorising stays the same.

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