Neutralization systems

Enhance the taste, stability and shelf life of your edible oils through the effective removal of free fatty acids in your crude oil. Alfa Laval neutralization systems remove free fatty acids and other impurities that impact edible oil quality, consistency, appearance, taste and shelf life. Tailor these systems to your needs—whether cold, alkali or miscella refining. What you get is crude oil free of impurities and sodium soap for onward processing into quality edible oils and soapstock.

Reliable, effective neutralization of free fatty acids enhances your edible oil refining processes

Ensure more uptime and longer service life due to robust system design
Maximize edible oil quality, taste, shelf life and yield
Boost operational reliability and efficiency
Minimize oil loss and operating costs
Easy to install, operate and maintain

Effective alkali refining calls for reliable neutralization systems to remove the free fatty acids and gum residues that make edible oils acidic and prone to oxidization. With Alfa Laval neutralization systems, you can enjoy true peace of mind knowing that optimized processes are in place to boost productivity and yield of your edible oil refining processes. And you can rest assured that our global service centres and partners are nearby to support your every need.

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Neutralization System Process

The Alfa Laval Neutralization System consists of heat exchanges, dosing pumps, mixers, agitators and disc stack centrifuges.

How it works

The greater the free fatty acids, the more challenging the purification process and the stronger the caustic soda concentration needed to neutralize and remove them. First, crude oil is heated, dosed with acid, mixed, dosed again with caustic soda (lye), and mixed once more. It is then transferred to the retention tanks, where the bonds between the oil and free fatty acids and other impurities are broken.

Next, the neutralization of oils and fats is carried out continuously using disc stack centrifuges. Generally speaking, there are two methods to neutralize fats and oils:

Long-mix refining process for crude soybean or rapeseed oil

To neutralize the free fatty acids, the heated crude oil is dosed with acid and lye and remains in contact with caustic soda in special retention mixers for an extended period. The oil is then heated and transferred to disc stack centrifuges where soapstock and wash water are separated from the refined oil in a single stage.

Multi-mix refining process for virtually any oil

Here the crude oil comes into contact with the caustic soda for a short period. It then goes through one to two stages of washing. When processing cottonseed oil or low-quality crude fats and oils, a second lye treatment, known as re-refining, is necessary.

Once neutralization is complete, the oil is washed. The wash water is then removed using disc stack centrifuges. The oil is transferred to a vacuum dryer for drying. The free fatty acids and other impurities (sugars, pigments and trace metals) separated from the oil are sent downstream for processing into soapstock.   

Alfa Laval also offers neutralization systems for miscella refining of cottonseed oil and cold refining of sunflower or maize/corn oil.