How to Extract Sunflower Seed Oil Efficiently?

Sunflower seeds are the seeds of the sunflower plant. They are high in protein and are an important raw material for oil extraction . Sunflower seed oil, extracted from sunflower seeds, is an edible vegetable oil that has been highly praised by the nutrition community in recent years. It is rich in unsaturated fatty acids, with linoleic acid, an essential fatty acid for the human body, accounting for about 50% to 60%. Linoleic acid can lower serum cholesterol and inhibit cholesterol deposition in blood vessels. Sunflower seed oil is one of the important edible oils in many countries and is considered a nutritious and healthy oil.

The common processing methods for sunflower seed oil include pressing and extraction. Due to the high oil content of sunflower seeds, a single pressing or extraction process cannot fully extract the oil. Therefore, some manufacturers use a pre-pressing and extraction process to extract the oil. In this process, sunflower seeds are first pre-pressed to obtain about 80% of the oil, and then the remaining high-oil-content sunflower seed cake is sent to extraction equipment to extract the remaining oil. This method can fully extract the oil from the raw material, increase the oil yield, and obtain high-quality meal.

The extraction method uses solvents that can dissolve oil. Through wetting, molecular diffusion, and convective diffusion, the solvent fully contacts the oil material to extract the oil from the material embryo, resulting in mixed oil. The solvent is then evaporated and stripped to recover the solvent, separating it from the mixed oil, and filtering the meal residue to obtain crude sunflower seed oil. The solvent in the meal also needs to be recovered, and the extracted meal can be used for plant protein extraction or as raw material for food processing.

The solvent used for oil extraction should be stable, not undergo chemical changes during heating and cooling, and have a boiling point lower than the oil. This allows the solvent to be easily separated from the oil and meal, and it should not react with the oil, meal, or equipment materials. Currently, industrial hexane or No. 6 light gasoline is commonly used as extraction solvents in industrial production.

The extraction process includes several main steps: oil material pretreatment, solvent extraction, mixed oil separation, wet meal desolventizing and drying, and solvent recovery. Proper pretreatment can make the structure and properties of the raw material embryo meet the requirements of the extraction process, improve oil penetration, and accelerate the extraction rate.

The pre-pressing and extraction method is suitable for processing oil materials with high oil content, such as peanuts, tea seeds, rapeseed, sunflower seeds, flax seeds, etc. The extraction process is relatively mature, but choosing the extraction method also requires considering the quality of the equipment and the extraction process provided by the manufacturer. When purchasing equipment, it is important to consider the reputation, technology, and after-sales service of the oil plant, and choose a suitable and reliable manufacturer to cooperate with, which can provide good support for the subsequent development of the oil plant.