Evaluation of surfactant-aided degumming of vegetable oils by membrane technology

The first step in the process of vegetable oil refining is degumming, in wh ich phospholipids and mucilaginous gums are removed that otherwise result i n a low-grade oil. A membrane process is remarkably simple yet potentially offers many advantages in degumming. Studies were conducted on surfactant-a ided membrane degumming with soybean and rapeseed oils in a magnetically st irred flat membrane batch cell with different types of microfiltration memb ranes. The reduction of phospholipids in soybean oil was in the range of 85 .8-92.8% during the membrane process. The phosphorus content of membrane pe rmeates of soybean oil was in the range of 20-58 mg/kg. Crude rapeseed oil contained higher amount of nonhydratable phospholipids and hence resulted i n lower reduction in phospholipids, in the range of 66.4-83.2%. Addition of hydratable phospholipids could improve the efficiency of degumming in the membrane process without using any electrolyte, resulting in improvement of quality as well as quantity of the phospholipids.