corn germ oil extraction

Corn/maize germ is the raw materials of the oilseed press. There is germ 8-10 kg in every 100 kg of maize, the corn germ oil that squeezing from the corn germ is called corn oil, also called corn germ oil.Corn oil has good effect to cardiovascular disease, eat corn oil, easy be absorbed by human body, the digestive rate is more than 97%.Corn germ oil, is a refined vegetable oil obtained from the germ of corn plant, corn germ oil is one of the plant oils that accumulate the highest levels of unsaturated fatty acids in the triacylglycerol fraction.

Basic step for all the processes is inspection and cleaning. The shipments are inspected for contamination and cleaned thrice to remove cob parts, dust, chaff and other materials before steeping, the first processing step begins. In this step of steeping, clean corn grains are soaked at 50°C water in big steel tanks . During this process the grains swell and soften. After steeping, the corn is coarsely ground to break the germ loose from other components. The ground corn, in water slurry, flows to the germ separators. In this process of germ separation, cyclone separators spin the low density corn germ out of the slurry. The germs are pumped into a screen and washed separately to remove stray amount of starch in the mixture. Oil is recovered from corn germ by expelling, solvent extraction or a combination of expelling and solvent extraction. Wet milled germ is preferably expelled from an oil content of 50-60% down to 20-25% and finally extracted with hexane to a residual oil content of 1-2% in the spent corn germ flakes. The oil is then refined and filtered into finished corn oil.

Crude corn oil contains 95% triglycerides besides containing minor compounds like free fatty acids, waxes, phospholipids, pigments, and odourous compounds. Before making the corn oil acceptable to the consumers these components are removed from the crude oil through a refining process. This process involves several steps:formation of sodium soaps of the free fatty acids,  removal of the emulsion containing the soaps and phospholipids by centrifugation,  removal of waxes by chilling, removal of pigments by contact with bleaching clays,  removal of odours by high-vacuum distillation.

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