Recovery of bleaching clay used in the bleaching process in the refining of edible oil

Abstract

The disposal and reuse of Spent Bleaching Clay from soybean oil refinery is a problem of growing importance to many edible oil processing industries. Today the only practical way of removing Spent Bleaching Clay is by disposal. The extraction with organic solvents is a well-known method of extracting the oil from the Spent Bleaching Clay (also known as de-oiling contaminated Spent Bleaching Clay). Many organic solvents are used to extract the residual oil in the spent bleaching clay. In this research hexane solvent was used for extraction. The percentage oil content and other minor components in SBC was 18 % by weight. All the extracted oil, had poor quality than the crude oil. The aim of this research project was for a complete separation of the residual oil from Spent Bleaching Clay. The results showed that the recovered Spent Bleaching Clay still had an activity approximately 56 % that of fresh bleaching clay.