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

The first step in the process of vegetable oil refining
is degumming, in which phospholipids and mucilaginous
gums are removed that otherwise result in a low-grade oil. A
membrane process is remarkably simple yet potentially offers
many advantages in degumming. Studies were conducted on surfactant-
aided membrane degumming with soybean and rapeseed
oils in a magnetically stirred flat membrane batch cell with different
types of microfiltration membranes. 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
permeates of soybean oil was in the range of 20–58 mg/kg. Crude
rapeseed oil contained higher amount of nonhydratable phospholipids
and hence resulted in 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.