Oil Mill Gazetteer OFFICIAL ORGAN of the NATIONAL OIL MILL SUPERINTENDENTS* ASSOCIATION and TRI-STATES COTTONSEED OIL MILL SUPERINTENDENTS* ASSOCIATION
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SOLVENT EXTRACTION ISSUE Oil Mill Gazetteer OFFICIAL ORGAN OF THE NATIONAL OIL MILL SUPERINTENDENTS* ASSOCIATION AND TRI-STATES COTTONSEED OIL MILL SUPERINTENDENTS* ASSOCIATION Vol 51; No. 7 Wharton, Texas, January, 1947 Price 25 Cents nnoLincincj r u n i j , °f 3 i r m LUCIAN COLE DILL COLE Lucian Cole has purchased interest in the INDUSTRIAL MACHINERY COM PANY of Fort Worth, Texas, for his son, Dill. After three years in the Armed Services, Dill has returned to civilian life and has chosen to follow in his Father's footsteps in the Oil Mill Machinery business and is proud to announce his connections with the INDUSTRIAL MACHINERY COMPANY, FORT WORTH, TEXAS. INDUSTRIAL MACHINERY CO. is a new company, manufacturers of HELICOID SCREW CON VEYORS, STEEL CONVEYOR TROUGHS and accessories; a complete line of ELEVATING, CON VEYING and TRANSMISSION EQUIPMENT, and olher oil mill machinery. INDUSTRIAL MACHINERY COMPANY ARE ALSO REPRESENTATIVES FOR MANUFACTURERS OF THE original "ROTOR LIFT." INDUSTRIAL MACHINERY COMPANY solicits your most careful investigation as to their capacity and ability to serve you. INDUSTRIAL MACHINERY COMPANY Fort Worth, Texas 2300 South Main St. P. O. Box 1259 Phone: 4 -7 2 6 9 J. G. Thomas W. P. Thomas F. Dill Cole L. B. Dodson Purchasing Agent GOOD FOUNDATION ...THE FIRST STEP TOWARD FUTURE SUCCESS “Doc” MacGee says: You Build Soundly When You Buy SKELLYSOLVE Your future business depends on the quality of assurance of uniform quality do you have? your product, which in turn depends on Or of dependable delivery? the quality of the ingredients you use. That’s These and Other points are worth considering why the money you invest in industrial when you invest in naphthas. Keep them in naphthas is so vital to your continuing busi mind— and remember that you’re building ness volume and income. on a sound foundation when you invest There'S a reason for the uniform superior in time-proved Skellysolve. It still serves quality of Skellysolve . why you as a user you best! can rely on Skelly for dependable service and on-time shipments. Skelly Oil Company pioneered the making of close-cut type naphthas for specific How SKEUYsoiye e industries over 16 years ago. Since that time, steady production . backed by dili Z Tare six T differed* m gent research and improved processes . “ Jve which are Skelly. has been maintained. And that production has expanded to meet newer requirements * e efficient e * , ^ ^ *° and growing demands. bea". cottonseed, meat s ° germ’ s°y- Prompt delivery of Skellysolve is something ™ * « a b le a n d a n im a;o .(s raP’ ^ ° th« you can count on, too. That has been The SkeJ/ysojve i an important point in the Skelly policy of service to industry . will continue to be in refined /or extraction o f ‘ the years ahead. r t cottonseed C Z ^ b° " « S range and other C°rreC‘ True, you may be able to buy competitive « « e s which meet tJ]e - PeCIai prci>. naphthas today at slightly lower prices. But what assurance do you have that they will tnents of tliis particular service^ re(^u*re" stay lower in price . much less continue to be available in quantities needed? And what SKELLYSOLVE SOLVENTS DIVISION, SKELLY OIL COMPANY SKELLY BLDG., KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI Oil Mill Gazetteer OFFICIAL ORGAN OF THE NATIONAL OIL MILL SUPERINTENDENTS’ ASSOCIATION and TRI-STATES COTTONSEED OIL MILL SUPERINTENDENTS’ ASSOCIATION SOLVENT EXTRACTION OF OILSEEDS1 much more developmental work on the design of By W. H. GOSS suitable equipment in order to make it a practical Northern Regional Research Laboratory2 method of operation. Only in very recent years have Peoria, Illinois some of the most serious obstacles to its use been overcome, and in some applications there still remain The processing- of oilseeds has been a vital many problems to be solved. industry for thousands of years. During- this time, both the equipment and the methods employed From the standpoint of oil recovery, solvent ex traction is the most efficient method known for for conducting the various operations have under processing oilseeds. The content of residual oil in gone practically continuous evolution from primitive the marc seldom exceeds 1 percent, and in the case of toward modern machinery and practices. The present soybeans a figure of 0.6 percent is typical, represent discussion will be limited to developments within the ing an overall recovery of about 96 percent of the past 50 years and will deal chiefly with the present oil originally in the beans. Expeller pressing of soy trend toward the use of solvent extraction for proc beans yields a meal containing 4 to 5 percent oil, on essing seeds which have been treated previously by the basis of 12 percent moisture. To obtain such a other means. product, the press recovers only approximately 80 Many processes are used to recover oil from seeds, percent of the oil. Since the oil commands five times but the three common procedures are hydraulic the price of the meal, one striking advantage of ex pressing, expeller pressing, and solvent extraction. traction is immediately apparent. Hydraulic pressing All three are used widely, frequently in combination. similarly produces a meal containing 5 to 6 percent Hydraulic presses are made in a variety of sizes and oil which, in the case of soybeans, represents an oil types, of which three styles are employed on a large recovery of only 75 percent. scale in this country. Examples of these include the Although solvent extraction affords a compara cage presses found in castor bean mills, box presses tively high yield of oil, which is the principal advan for crushing cotton seed, and plate presses designed tage of the process, it suffers a number of disad for processing linseed. The last two are often refer vantages which have caused oil millers to proceed red to as Anglo-American presses. slowly in its adoption. The soybean industry has led For processing a number of seeds, particularly all others in the trend toward extraction, but this soybeans, continuous presses such as the Anderson development is due at least in part to the fact that expeller and the French screw press have re soybeans are ideally suited to the solvent method of placed the hydraulic equipment originally utilized. processing. Nearly all other seeds contain higher They have proved quite successful because of lower percentages of oil and consequently are difficult to operating costs per unit of material processed and form into thin, uniform flakes which can be handled because they require very little hand labor. Expellers in the ordinary types of contacting apparatus. Fur are used throughout the world on a wide variety of thermore, seeds containing a large amount of oil oleaginous materials, but in some countries their cannot be formed readily into sufficiently rugged chief function is to forepress seeds containing a high flakes or into any other shape which lends itself to percentage of oil, that is, to reduce the oil content rapid extraction of the oil without disintegrating. It of these seeds sufficiently to permit the use of sol is for this reason that many operators forepress vent extraction for “finishing” the process. these raw materials which contain high percentages The advantages of using solvents to extract oil of oil. from seeds have long been recognized, for extraction Another disadvantage of the solvent-extraction ordinarily permits the attaining of a much lower process is its initially higher cost, as compared with residual content of oil in the meal than does press an equivalent expeller mill. Comparisons between the ing1. Many seeds, however, are difficult to treat with two systems in this respect yield different results, solvents because of their physical structure or other depending on the make and size of equipment under characteristics. In addition, extraction is a more consideration. A prewar estimate indicated that complicated process than pressing and has required extraction facilities cost one-third more than equiv alent expeller equipment, and the fixed charges on the invested capital are therefore somewhat higher _ Presented at the 37th Annual Meeting of the American in the case of extraction. Other factors which con Chemists’ Society, New Orleans, Louisiana, May 15-17, tribute to the overall cost of operation compensate 1946, and at the Annual Meeting of the Tri-States Cotton to some extent for the greater fixed charges, and the oil Mill Superintendents Association, Incorporated, Memphis, Tennessee, May 29-30, 1946. added revenue which results from the higher yield of oil obtained by extraction much more than justifies One of the laboratories of the Bureau of Agricultural and Industrial Chemistry, Agricultural Research Admin any slight disadvantage which the solvent method istration, U. S. Department of Agriculture. might have with respect to operating costs. Page 12 OIL MILL GAZETTEER lanuary, 1947 Solvent extraction is more hazardous than press titative measurements, is in agreement with quali ing, and in order to conduct the operation safely, it tative observations made by many operators of ex is necessary to employ more highly skilled labor and traction equipment that the oil removed initially is to maintain a staff of technically trained operators. of higher quality than the smaller proportion which In many cases, however, the extra cost of such workers is reflected in enhanced value of the pro ducts and more efficient operation than would be obtained from less highly qualified operators. Fullsfutzen Benzm fintntt Theory Odmpfe- Enfluftung The theory of diffusion has been variously applied A u stritt for correlating data on rates of extraction, predict ing extraction time, and designing contracting ap paratus. No detailed review of such research will be presented here, but attention should be called to two recent publications3 from the University of Michigan in which it has been shown that the theory of dif fusion can be applied successfully to the extraction of oil from soybean flakes if it is assumed that part of the oil is readily extracted and that the remainder can be leached out only with considerably greater difficulty.