What Are the Key Steps in Soybean Oil Refining?

Soybean oil, as one of the world's four major edible oils, plays an indispensable role in our culinary culture. Huatai's soybean oil refining projects utilize cutting-edge technology to significantly enhance oil quality while effectively removing harmful substances such as plasticizers, pesticide residues, glycidyl esters, trans fatty acids, and other potential health risks, ensuring high-quality and safe oil products for consumers.

In the complex soybean oil processing workflow, refining equipment acts as a bridge, linking raw materials to high-quality finished products. Huatai Group provides refining equipment with advanced degumming, deacidification, decolorization, and deodorization technologies that accurately eliminate unpleasant flavors like bean odor and scorched smell from soybean oil.

After producing crude soybean oil, harmful natural substances and contaminants arising during production or storage, such as phospholipids, free fatty acids, moisture, pigments, and odorous impurities, cannot be removed with simple filtration. These impurities can lead to rancidity and spoilage of soybean oil, so refineries further process crude oil with refining equipment to remove impurities.

Soybean oil refining mainly includes steps such as deacidification, decolorization, and deodorization:

Deacidification：

Deacidification with alkali refining involves neutralizing free fatty acids in crude oil with sodium hydroxide solution, forming sodium soap that precipitates and separates from oil. Using low-concentration alkali and maintaining the oil under negative pressure during refining ensures better deacidification results.

Decolorization：

Decolorization uses absorbents with strong selective adsorption of certain pigments and impurities in oil under controlled conditions. It is recommended to choose quality activated clay in appropriate amounts and regularly inspect filters to replace damaged filter bags or screens.

Deodorization 

High-temperature deodorization induces isomerization reactions in unsaturated fatty acids, forming trans oleic acid and trans linolenic acid, which may impact oil's freezing resistance. During deodorization, equipment must remain sealed, vacuum stable, and temperature controlled around 250°C, with low product oil exit temperatures to limit trans fatty acid increases to under 1%, ensuring oil quality.

By properly utilizing soybean oil production equipment and adhering to correct processing workflows, soybean oil quality and stability can be effectively improved to meet consumer demands for edible oil. Currently, there are many oil equipment manufacturers in the market. Huatai Machinery advises thorough consultation, comparison, and factory visits to select a reliable manufacturer before making a final decision.