Oil Refinery Plant

For refining the oil, there are three basic processes in the refinery. First process is neutralizing the oil in the neutralizer to remove the Free Fatty Acids (FFA) by adding caustic soda. Oil is heated upto about 60o C by thermic fluid coils and oil is stirred by stirrer. Then soap stock formed due to chemical reaction is allowed to settle at the bottom of the neutralizer from where it is taken out into soap pan.

Neutralized oil is drawn into the second vessel called bleacher where colour of oil is removed by bleaching process with aid of chemicals such as carbon black and bleaching earth. Oil is generally heated upto 110o C by thermic fluid coils. Stirring is also continued. Bleaching process is done under vacuum.

Bleached oil then goes to the filter press where bleaching earth and chemicals are separated and clean bleached oil is then drawn to deodourizer where oil is heated above 110o C through thermic fluid coils and then live steam is given to the oil from the bottom steam nozzles and temperature of oil is raised upto 220o C through thermic fluid coils. Entire process is done under high vacuum. Thus smell is removed from the oil in the deodourizer. Then it goes to cooler where water circulating coils take away heat and oil is cooled. Again it goes to second filter press where completely refined and transparent colour less oil is obtained.

Thermic Fluid Boiler, Vacuum Pump, Barometric Condenser, Catchalls, Steam Generator etc. play their role in the refining process. So these equipments are part of the refinery and connected with the vessels through pipelines.

Additional Process for palm oil refinery
Specially for palm oil refinery, fractionation process is required in which palm olene and palm sterene are separated by scientifically cooling the refined palm oil by chilling plant and then filtering the oil. For this purpose crystalizing vessel is used in which chilling pipe coils cool the oil for fractionation. Palm sterene crystals are formed due to chilling which are separated in the filter press and pure liquid of palm olene is obtained and palm sterene cake is retained in the filter press.