Waxes are present in many oils, such as peanut oil, rice bran oil, sunflower oil, walnut oil, etc., and their content ranges from a few parts per million to 0.2 percent. So what is the effect of the presence of wax and how to remove it when processing edible oils? This article takes sunflower oil as an example and introduces the following in detail.

Sunflower seed oil content is high, in 38% ~ 45%, after taking the oil meal protein as high as 38% ~ 42%, suitable for the use of pre-pressing - extraction method of oil. This process can increase the oil yield of the product and also increase the production capacity of the extraction equipment. However, extraction method produces crude oil, which contains various impurities, such as water, free fatty acids, pigments, proteins and so on. Therefore, the crude oil needs to be refined by the refining equipment to remove some of the impurities, so as to make it a lighter-colored, clarified refined oil, and to meet the standards of oil products at all levels before it can be marketed and sold.

Sunflower oil in the refining process, dewaxing is the last step, The sunflower oil dewaxing process causes the wax to crystallize and then separate the oil and wax by filtering to obtain pure sunflower oil, due to the sunflower shell contains wax, in the extraction of sunflower oil, although the shell will be processed, but in order to improve the rate of oil, sunflower kernel will be mixed with a small amount of shell, which is to lead to get a small amount of wax in the crude oil, wax is a weak hydrophilic lipophilic compounds, in the low-temperature conditions will be precipitated from the oil.

When prolonged at low temperatures, the wax crystals coalesce with each other to form larger crystals, and the specific gravity increases to become a suspension, thus affecting the appearance of sunflower oil. In addition, the presence of waxes reduces the conversion rate of edible oils to human absorption, and also reduces the taste and flavor of the oil, so it is necessary to carry out the dewaxing process.

In other words, removing and extracting waxes from sunflower oils and fats can not only improve the quality of edible oils and fats, nutritional value and the quality of oil-containing foods, but also increase the industrial utilization value of oils and fats and comprehensively utilize the wax source of vegetable oils and fats.

At present, sunflower oil refining dewaxing process is relatively mature, but the effect of oil dewaxing in the market is not the same, which is closely related to the choice of machinery and equipment. Therefore,  oil plant in the choice, we must cooperate with the strength and high market share of machinery and equipment manufacturers, not only can achieve the desired dewaxing effect, but also because of the large manufacturers, whether it is in the quality of machinery and equipment, program or after-sales service are guaranteed, to help oil plant high-quality economic development!