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Fresh Fruit Bunches Plant

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Palm oil in bunch content of 25 percent. This is equivalent to a yield of 5 tones oil/hectare/year (excluding the palm kernel oil), which far outstrips any other source of edible oil.

Ideal Composition of Palm Fruit Bunch

FFB (Fresh Fruit Branches) for Palm consists of the following process steps:

Fresh Fruit Branches for Palm consists of the following process steps

Process Description

Fresh fruit arrives from the field as bunches or loose fruit. The fresh fruit is normally emptied into wooden boxes suitable for weighing on a scale so that quantities of fruit arriving at the processing site may be checked. Large installations use weighbridges to weigh materials in trucks.
The quality standard achieved is initially dependent on the quality of bunches arriving at the mill. The mill cannot improve upon this quality but can prevent or minimize further deterioration.
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Bunch Sterilization

Sterilization or cooking means the use of high-temperature wet-heat treatment of loose fruit. Cooking normally uses hot water; sterilization uses pressurized steam. The cooking action serves several purposes.
Heat treatment destroys oil-splitting enzymes and arrests hydrolysis and autoxidation. For sterilization, bunches are cooked whole, the wet heat weakens the fruit stem and makes it easy to remove the fruit from bunches on shaking or tumbling in the threshing machine.
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Bunch Threshing: (Removal of fruits from the bunch)

The fresh fruit bunch consists of fruit embedded in spikelet’s growing on a main stem. In a mechanized system, a rotating drum or fixed drum equipped with rotary beater bars detach the fruit from the bunch, leaving the spikelet on the stem.
Digestion is the process of releasing the palm oil in the fruit through the rupture or breaking down of the oil-bearing cells. The digester commonly used consists of a steam-heated cylindrical vessel fitted with a central rotating shaft carrying many beater (stirring) arms. Through the action of the rotating beater arms the fruit is pounded. Pounding, or digesting the fruit at high temperature, helps to reduce the viscosity of the oil, destroys the fruits’ outer covering (exocarp), and completes the disruption of the oil cells already begun in the sterilization phase.
Spectecs Specially designed Fruit Digester consists of Heat insulation & steam injectors which protects their contents at elevated temperatures during this operation and eliminates the rix of oil oxidation.

There are two distinct methods of extracting oil from the digested material. One system uses mechanical presses and is called the ‘dry’ method. The other called the ‘wet’ method uses hot water to leach out the oil.

In the ‘dry’ method the objective of the extraction stage is to squeeze the oil out of a mixture of oil, moisture, fibre and nuts by applying mechanical pressure on the digested mash.

Digested fruit is continuously conveyed through the cage towards an outlet restricted by a cone, which creates the pressure to expel the oil through the cage perforations (drilled holes). Oil-bearing cells that are not ruptured in the digester will remain unopened if a hydraulic or centrifugal extraction system is employed. Screw presses, due to the turbulence and kneading action exerted on the fruit mass in the press cage, can effectively break open the unopened oil cells and release more oil. These presses act as an additional digester and are efficient in oil extraction.

Moderate metal wear occurs during the pressing operation, creating a source of iron contamination. The rate of wear depends on the type of press, method of pressing, nut-to-fibre ratio, etc. High pressing pressures are reported to have an adverse effect on the bleach ability and oxidative conservation of the extracted oil.

Oil palm fruit pressed is divided into two parts, oil, water, solid impurities mixture and the press cake (fiber and nuclear). Oil, water, solid impurities mixture by the crude oil gutter inflow to oil purification section; press cake by breaking screw conveyor into the fiber- recovery section.

The main point of clarification is to separate the oil from its entrained impurities. The fluid coming out of the press is a mixture of palm oil, water, cell debris, fibrous material and ‘non-oily solids’. Because of the non-oily solids, the mixture is very thick (viscous). Hot water is therefore added to the press output mixture to thin it. The dilution (addition of water) provides a barrier causing the heavy solids to fall to the bottom of the container while the lighter oil droplets flow through the watery mixture to the top when heat is applied to break the emulsion (oil suspended in water with the aid of gums and resins).
The diluted mixture is passed through a Vibro-screen to remove coarse fibre. The screened mixture is boiled from one or two hours and then allowed to settle by gravity in the large tank so that the palm oil, being lighter than water, will separate and rise to the top. The clear oil is decanted into a reception tank. This clarified oil still contains traces of water and dirt.
The impurities and water is separated through the two phase/ three phase decanters.
The Palm oil from decanter will be pumped to Continuous Vacuum drier, where moisture of Palm oil will be reduced under vacuum.
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