| 摘要 |
The present invention relates to a method for treating vegetable oils and/or animal fats comprising a vacuum steam stripping operation, condensing the neutral oils from vapour phase at an elevated temperature, retaining and sending back to the stripping column, allowing steam, volatile fatty acids, micronutrients together with other volatiles to pass to a cold condensation zone, and condensing the volatile fatty acids, micronutrients together with other volatiles in the cold condensation zone, producing a condensate and a stream of steam, non-condensable gases along with traces of fatty acids and other lighter hydrocarbons vapours. The invention may include a distillation step, either between the high and low temperature condensation zones or following the cold condensation zone. |
| 主权项 |
1. A method for treating vegetable oils and/or animal fats comprising:
(i) feeding an oily feed stream to a vacuum steam stripping column operating at a vacuum level of at least 1 mbar, said oily feed stream comprising (a) volatiles, said volatiles comprising volatile fatty acids and other volatiles, (b) micronutrients and (c) neutral oils, and stripping off components comprising volatiles, micronutrients and neutral oils; (ii) feeding the stripped off components to a high temperature condensing zone, condensing the neutral oils from vapour phase at an elevated temperature of at least 150° C., obtaining condensed neutral oils, retaining and returning all or some portion of the condensed neutral oils directly or indirectly to the vacuum steam stripping column, and allowing steam, volatile fatty acids, other volatiles, and micronutrients to pass to a cold condensation zone in step (iii) or allowing steam, volatile fatty acids, other volatiles and micronutrients to be fed to a distilling column in a distilling step before the cold condensation zone in step (iii); (iii) condensing the volatile fatty acids, other volatiles and micronutrients in the cold condensation zone at a temperature of at least 25° C., obtaining a condensate comprising volatile fatty acids, other volatiles and micronutrients and a stream comprising steam, non-condensable gases, traces of fatty acids and other lighter hydrocarbons vapours, and allowing said stream to continue to vacuum system; and that the method also comprises obtaining a neutral oils product stream, a fatty acid product stream and a micronutrients product stream. |
