What are the steps involved in coconut oil refining process?

Crude coconut oil contains impurities and needs to be further refined into bright and high quality coconut oil that meets national standards before it can be sold. There are mainly four steps involved in coconut oil refining process: degumming, deacidification, decolorization and deodorization.

The following will introduce coconut refining steps in details in combination with the coconut oil refining machine required.

Coconut refining step

First step:degumming.

When degumming, the crude oil is first pumped into the degumming equipment, and the hot water of about 80℃ is added for stirring. The hot water reacts with the phospholipid molecules in oil to form micelles. And after precipitation separation, the colloidal impurities in coconut oil can be removed to achieve the purpose of degumming.

Second step: deacidification.

There are two deacidification ways and they are chemical deacidification and physical deacidification. Chemical deacidification means adding lye to coconut oil to neutralize it in deacidification equipment so as to remove FFA. Physical deacidification means adopting high temperature water vapor to remove FFA is in coconut oil by distillation principle. Customers can choose the deacidification way according to their personal needs and deacidification requirements.

Third step: decolorization.

When decolorizing, white soil is added to decolorizing equipment to adsorb the pigment and some other particulate impurities in crude coconut oil. After adsorption, the coconut oil is pumped into the leaf filter to filter out the waste white soil adsorbed with pigment, thus completing the decolorization step.

Fourth step: deodorization.

When deodorizing, direct steam should be injected into the deodorizing equipment to remove the odor substances in coconut oil by using the volatilization difference of oil and odor substances, so as to improve the flavor and quality of coconut.

Henan Glory Company has rich experience in edible oil refining and our engineer team can customize different scales of coconut oil refining equipment according to customer requirements. Our factory also has a prototype of small scale coconut oil refining equipment for reference, looking forward to your visit!