Introducing the Extraction of Oil from Jatropha Seed

Extraction will be the subsequent step for cleaned and ready Jatropha seeds. There are two stages for oil extraction. The first stage, which is also known as expelling, employs pressing the seeds for oil, the second stage uses a solvent extraction method to extract the remaining oil.

Pressing / Expelling

Presses are used to extract the oil from the seed in new methods. Small presses like the Bielenberg ram press may be powered by hand, by 1 or several operators. Then the capacity is usually 1-10 kg/h of seeds. Bigger capacity presses are powered by engines like the oil mill expeller.

Solvent Extraction

Solvent extraction is a procedure that is used to recover a component from either a solid or liquid. In this procedure, the material in which the component of interest is present is contacted with a solvent that will dissolve the solutes of interest. Solvent extraction is usually the most effective method of separation of beneficial products from complex feedstock or reaction products and this make it the major commercial significance towards the chemical and biochemical industries.

In the case of Jatropha oil press machines, the solvent extraction stage comes following the expeller stage. The crushed Jatropha seeds that come from the expeller along with a solvent inside a commercial extractor will be mixed together. Heptane, hexane and petroleum ethers would be the common used solvent.

The Jatropha oil dissolves in the solvent, and the pulp is filtered out from the solution. The oil and solvent are separated by means of fractional distillation. Fractional distillation will be the separation of a mixture into its component parts by heating them to a temperature at which several fractions of the compound will evaporate.