Dealing with poor-quality vegetable crude oil

While on the way from harvest fields to processing sites, oil seeds and fruits are transported by trucks, rail, barge and/or ship. They are stored in silos, loaded and unloaded, handled with payloader, Bobcat and other heavy mechanical equipment, conveyed several times and exposed to free fall from high drop heights (drop height over 40 feet is not desirable).

It is key during all this handling, no matter whether it is bulk or manual, to protect beans and fruits from splits, breakage, heat, direct sun light, rain or moisture, oxidation, enzymatic activity, dust generation, foreign materials, pests and cross contamination. All of it plays an important risk. It is not an easy job to keep the product’s integrity and avoid quality reduction.

Depending on the product’s handling, we can get a damage rate from 4% to 40% or sometimes more. Therefore, it’s very important to have proper management of all the supply chain to keep the product’s integrity. Some sensible practices are the use of good storage conditions, right ventilation, correct use of belt or chain conveyors.

For example, belt/conveyors can change their position on the vertical and horizontal level to reduce the drop height to less than 12 meters and to have product uniform distribution.

Besides, we have the MOSH/MOAH issue that forces us to use higher cost food grade lubricants. We need to reduce the abuse of mechanical machines to have an even cost implementation for these lubricants. Heavy mechanical equipment reduction will also result much better safety conditions during operation, drastically reducing or eliminating long term injuries or death.

In addition, weather variables or market conditions could pressure early harvest before full maturity, collecting green seeds/fruits which crude oil results with very high chlorophyll (for Soybean and Canola), blue color and non-hydratable phosphatides (NHP) levels, after the extraction process. On the other hand, very dry conditions in the middle of crop development could lead to a red & yellow color fixation and NHP high values, on the crude oil as well.

Consequences of seed/fruit’s quality reduction

There are not many things that can be done at the extraction plant to avoid problems or bad quality in the resulting crude oil from damage or early harvest of beans/fruits. We will have crude oil with color increase and fixation, high level of chlorophyll (soy and canola), blue color, free fatty acids, peroxides, and very low stability that it will make it very difficult to be refined. All of this carries out increased processing costs and big probabilities of not meeting specifications and therefore reprocessing costs.

Recent trends from consumers markets are challenging/tightening standards and specifications. This makes it increasingly difficult for the refined oil processors to fulfill them, especially in qualities such as color, free fatty acids and what we will call special analysis, MOSH/MOAH, 3MCPD’s and glycidyl Esters, Trans Fatty Acids, among others.

The increase in refinery operative costs may offset the price reduction on low quality’s beans and fruits, or worse, savings will never reach the refiner’s pocket if it is not integrated.  Furthermore, the intangible costs must be brought to the table, such as long-time stability and/or shelf life, customer loyalty, employees engagement and a huge probability to be out of specification on special analysis. All of these issues can drive off balance the financial equation most of the time.

It would be ideal for oils and fat processors to be able to audit their suppliers and supplier’s suppliers to assure proper handling of fruits or seeds from the farmers in order to mitigate the risks previously described. Yet, this is something extremely difficult to achieve, not to mention, it would be not economically viable.

Depending on the product’s handling, we can get a damage rate from 4% to 40% or sometimes more. Therefore, it’s very important to have proper management of all the supply chain to keep the product’s integrity. Some sensible practices are the use of good storage conditions, right ventilation, correct use of belt or chain conveyors.

Turning a problem into an opportunity

There are options to mitigate the adverse consequences of receiving poor-quality crude oil that falls out of the technical capacity reach of a plant that was set up to refine a narrow-range quality.

Through optimization and control of chemical reactions and subsequent engineering modification of the refining process, refiners could efficiently process a wider range from poor to good quality crude oil, but the long standing opportunity is that they can do it providing a better quality and stability of final product, increasing refining capacity, achieving long-term sustainable and substantial savings while attaining high food safety standards.

Double R&D

Double R&D helps companies increase profitability by increasing efficiency and yields on processing edible oils and fats through chemical reaction engineering. Our proven approach generates long-term process improvements to support client financial sustainable growth and success.