FRACTIONATION

OF FATS AND OILS

Presented By:
Gurnoor Kaur, Harsha Raina,
Indu Saini, Jaskaran Singh
 Fractionation is:-

• A natural, value adding, physical oil modification

process creating no undesirable byproducts.

• Fractionation is a separation process in which a

certain quantity of a mixture (gas, solid, liquid,
enzymes, suspension, or isotope) is divided during a
phase transition, into a number of smaller quantities
(fractions) in which the composition varies according
to a gradient.

• From: Simple, low stearine yields and low efficiency 3

• To: Sophisticated, high stearine yields and efficient
 How? -----Fractionation Process principles

1. crystallisation

Slurry
2. solid/liquid separation

Olein Stearin

4
 DRY FRACTIONATION

Dry fractionation, also known as crystallization from the melt,

is fractional crystallization in its most simple form, and the
economy of the technology allows it to be used for production
of commodity fats. Dry fractionation has long been regarded
as an unpredictable, tedious and labor-intensive process.
Principle
 Works well on fats and oils having large amounts
of solid and liquid fractions.
 It is applied for removing high melting low solid
material from a large quantity of liquid fraction.
 It also works on separation of a small amount of a
liquid from a very large amount of solid.
The Process
 It consists of crystallization of fats, oils and fatty acids at
low temperature without any additives.
 Success depends on the efficiency of separation of
crystallized mass into solid (stearin) and liquid (oleic)
fractions.
 Efficient separation can be carried out by
1. Filtration under vacuum on a specially designed filter.
2. Filtration on a filter press equipped with membrane
plates
3. Hydraulic pressing
 Crystallizer should be able to gently cool down a mass of oil
and keep the resulting crystal suspension as homogeneous as
possible. Low supercooling will result in a formation of fewer
and larger crystals. Fat crystallization is a fairly exothermic
reaction so the efficiency with which this energy can be
removed is an important design feature.
 Too steep temperature gradients within the crystallizer will
lead to formation of viscous solid solutions near the cooling
wall while oil entrapped in dead zones or with insufficient heat
exchange with a cooling wall could encounter too high
temperatures to crystallize at an acceptable rate. 
 The cooling medium removing this heat of crystallization from crystallizers
is typically clean cooling tower water, sometimes mixed with some
propylene glycol to be able to work at subzero conditions. Cooling by
ammonia evaporation can also be considered, but very often turns out to be
too expensive for a classic installation. The cooling wall itself can be
double-jacket, stainless steel cooling fins (plates) or pipes. Normally, a
cooling surface of at least 4 m2 per m3 oil is expected to ensure proper heat
transfer for bulk edible oil fractionation.
  It is clear that the separation stage itself effectively determines the product
yields as well as the stearin quality. As more residual oleic can be expelled
from the solids cake, the final stearin will be more concentrated in crystals
and will turn out ‘purer’ and will display higher and steeper melting. The
olein quality is determined entirely by the amount and selectivity of
crystallization in the preceding stage. In some applications, the formed
crystals are often not sufficiently stress-resistant and get squeezed through
the filter medium. 
Equipment
Plant Assembly
 Solvent fractionation:-
In the case of solvent fractionation, the fat is first dissolved
in a solvent, then cooled slowly and separated in a high
pressure filter press. The resulting specialty fractions can
be used in value added applications such as confectionery
or as a substitute for cocoa butter. Traditionally,
fractionation using solvents resulted in fractions of greater
purity compared to dry fractionation. However, the use of
solvent fractionation is declining due to improvements in
dry fractionation filter press technology that can generate
fractions of similar quality.
 
This is the simplest way and sometimes the
most efficient for separating a group of
lipids of interest when the others are without
value. This approach depends on the
differential solubility of lipids in organic
solvents. 
Detergent fractionation
 Detergent fractionation was developed to improve
the separation of the crystallized phase from the
remaining liquid by adding an aqueous detergent
solution to the crystallized oil. The wetting agent,
usually sodium lauryl sulfate, in combination with
an electrolyte, usually magnesium sulfate, allows
the crystals to be easily suspended in the aqueous
phase. Separation of the water phase from the
remaining liquid oil is performed by means of a
centrifuge.
The water phase is subsequently heated and
the melted stearin is recovered in a second
centrifugation step. After separation, the olein
and stearin fractions are washed and dried in
order to remove traces of detergent. Today, the
technique has lost its interest due to the high
costs and contamination of the end-products
with the detergent.
SOME EXAMPLES OF
FRACTIONATION OF FAT
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Thank You