What is oil degumming?

Degumming is the process of hydrating phosphatides present in an oil by adding water followed by centrifugation. Degumming is optional when an oil will be caustic-refined since gums are removed in that step. Phosphatides are present in either a hydratable or nonhydratable form (NHP).

Is sunflower oil a phospholipid?

1 Phospholipids. Crude sunflower oil presents high content of phospholipids, which are the major constituents of the biological membranes.

Is soybean oil a phospholipid?

While crude soybean oil contains significant quantities of phospholipids (1.5–2.5%), unsaponifiable matter (1.6%), and traces of metals, after refining it is 99% triacylglycerol. The fatty acid composition of typical commodity soybean oil is shown in Table 7.

What is oil deodorization?

Deodorization is a steam-distillation process to remove free fatty acids and volatile components present in crude edible oil at this stage of processing. To strip these substances from the oil, steam is passed through the oil at very low pressure, relatively high temperature and high-vacuum conditions.

How are phospholipids involved in the degumming of oil?

The “hydratable” phospholipids agglomerate at the interface of the oil and water, capturing some nonhydratable phospholipids with them. Oil is also trapped by the phospholipids, forming an emulsion, referred to as “gums” or “wet gums”. Figure 2. Simplified scheme of water degumming process (courtesy Alfa Laval).

How are Phosphatides and phosphorus related in water degumming?

Water degumming reduces the phosphorus content to less than 50 ppm with good quality crude soybean oil. The usual relation between phosphorus and phosphatide content is that phosphatides are 30 times phosphorus. The water degumming process is simple, but the crude soybean oil quality has a significant influence on the efficiency of the process.

How are phosphatidylcholine and gums used in degumming?

Degumming is a process for removal of phosphatides from crude soybean and other vegetable oils to improve physical stability and facilitate further processing. The phosphatides are also called gums and lecithin. Lecithin is the common name for phosphatidylcholine, but common usage refers to all of the phosphatides present in vegetable oils.

How are phospholipids removed from edible oil?

In edible oil refining process, the most commonly used method is hydrated degumming, which can extract the hydratable phospholipids and some non-hydrate phospholipids, while the remaining non-hydrate phospholipids need to be removed by acid refining degumming.