coconut oil production

Usually coconut meat is dried into copra, and coconut oil is extracted from copra. Fresh coconut meat contains 30% - 40% of oil and 50% of water, while dried coconut meat contains 60% to 70% oil and 4% to 7% water. Coconut oil (copra oil) has wide applications in food and chemical industries, therefore, it is produced in many areas.  Indonesia is the world's largest supplier of coconut oil, followed by Philippines, India, Brazil, and Sri Lanka. So what equipment is needed to extract coconut oil?

 

How to Produce Coconut Oil

Take a 20TPD coconut oil production line for example. It uses a set hammer mill, a set of flaking machine, a set of steam cooking machine, 2 sets of 200A-3 screw oil press, one set of clarifying tank, a set of centrifugal oil separator, 5 sets of chain elevator, and one set of belt conveyor.If you are interested in setting up a coconut oil processing plant, please do not hesitate to contact us!

Coconut Oil Production Processing 

The coconut oil production process first needs to pre-treat the coconut. The pre-treatment process includes transportation and crushing of copra. It is then peeled and pressed to produce crude coconut oil. Finally, it is filtered to obtain pure and nutritious coconut oil.

Coconut Oil Production Flow Chart

Coconut oil production process is analyzed below:

1. Copra conveying: The raw material copra are blocks, so they are not suitable to be delivered by elevator; the small scraper conveyor has too small inlet, therefore the feeding will be unsmooth; while if the scraper is too big, it will cost too much. That’s why we choose belt conveyor for the coconut oil making line. Its slant angle should not exceed 30°, otherwise it is easy to fall out material. Before the crushing device, we install an iron removal device, which can on one hand prevent the equipments from being damaged by irons, one the other hand guarantee coconut oil cake quality.

2. Crushing: Copra is big block dried coconut meat, whose size can be 180mm x 100mm x 6mm. Therefore, we should first solve the problem of copra breaking. We choose hammer crusher, and increase screen size, reduce the number of hammers, and arrange hammers crossover uniformly. Copra has high oil content, so we use chain elevator for the transport of the material after crushing. Also because of the high degree of powder, the import and feed nozzle are easily piled up or even blocked; therefore, the inlet and outlet pipes are designed with observation window, for convenient observation and unchoking.

3. Flaking: Copra is a high oil content material. if the rolling distance is too small, it is easy to get oil, but after crushing and conveying, the oil has been infiltrated in the surface of material, so they are easy to clot and adhere to roller, resulting in roll feeding difficulties or even blocking; and at the same time, the copra is too dry, hard, tough and has small density, if the rolling distance is too small, the material will be piled between the two rollers. Therefore, the flaking of copra is different from other oil materials, its rolling distance is larger, about 3 to 4.5mm, to avoid the high degree of powder, adhere to roller and unsmooth material discharge.

4. Steam cooking: Due to the continuous stirring of steam cooking machine, the oil tend to flow out from the copra, and drip down along the principal axes, resulting in waste and workshop environment pollution; at the same time the material is easily clotted and cause difficulty  to transmission. Solution: reduce the degree of material powder, decrease stirring time, and frequently clean up the feeding nozzles of steam cooking machine and elevator, to prevent the build-up of material.

   Steam pressure	0.6MPa
   Indirect steam	open the third, fourth, five layer steam pan
   Steam cooking time	30 ~ 40min
   Discharge temperature	100 DEG C
   Direct steam	off

5. Coconut oil pressing: due to the distinct material properties of copra from common oil materials, if we process it in conventional way, there may result in no feed, no cake out or there is any oil squeezed out at the pressing cage, so the pressing bar clearance needs to be adjusted. When pressing copra, the gap between the pressing bars must be small.

   
   20TPD Coconut Oil Press Plant

   
   Large Coconut Oil Making Machine
   
   20TPD Coconut Oil Mill Plant

   
   Coconut Oil Press Machine

   The main components of the copra fed into the screw oil press: moisture 4.84%, fat 7.47%, crude protein 22.89%, carbohydrate 29.15%, crude fiber 8.53%, ash 6.82%, calcium 0.16%, phosphorus 0.55%, magnesium 0.23%, potassium 1.75%, zinc 53mg/kg.

   Steam pressure	0.6Mpa
   Indirect steam	open
   The steam cooking time	20-30min
   Inlet temperature	115-120℃
   Direct steam	off
   Cake thickness	6-8mm
   Residual oil in cake	<10%
   Free fatty acids	3.8% (acid value is about 7.6mgKOH/g)

6. Coconut oil clarifying & filtering: copra has high fiber content, so the crude coconut oil contains too many dregs. In order to reduce the filter burden, in the coconut oil production process we add a oil clarifying process, so that the dregs directly go back to the oil press for  re-pressing.

   Coconut Oil Pressing Process Working Video

   Tips for coconut oil making process：
   Firstly, the free fatty acid (FFA) content of crude coconut oil is higher than that of common oil.
   The American commercial rules stipulates that the free fatty acid content of the highest class coconut oil are not higher than 3%, but that of the most crude coconut oil is above 5%. In the pressing process, there produced 3.8% FFA. Although there is high content of free fatty acids in crude coconut oil, it is hard to become rancid.
   In addition, crude coconut oil melting point is 19 to 22 degrees C, so in room temperature coconut oil will be solidified, which gives trouble to its storage and transportation.
   Therefore, the heating device is arranged in the oil tank, which can prevent the freezing of coconut oil, and the heating device is also installed in the filter tank. But the heating temperature must be controlled. After the clarification of coconut oil, it can go through the filter and finally get the crude coconut oil.

   Crude Coconut oil test results:

   Moisture and impurity content	0.2%
   Acid value	7.6mgKOH/g
   Color	(13.335cm groove) R10, Y40
   Saponification value	262.6mgKOH/g

Coconut tree is widely seen in Asian and Pacific Ocean Islands, Africa and the South Central America. If you live in a place where many coconut trees are planted, you might as well establish a coconut oil production plant nearby. This is a profitable business. And, when you contact us, we will provide you with the present price of starting a coconut oil mill and complete machinery pricing and installation.

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