Design and development of secondary controlled industrial palm kernel nut vegetable oil expeller plant for energy saving and recuperation

This paper presents an experimental work on energy saving and recuperation in secondary controlled industrial palm nut vegetable oil plant. It employs the hydrostatic constant pressure rail principle to accomplish crushing, pressing and filtering operations. The seed crushing and oil expelling operations are based on pressure differential between the fed seeds and discharged mash resulting in an oil recovery efficiency of 97.1%, energy saving of 53.48 KW during cylinder retraction and the reduction in barrel temperature from 203 to 187 °C which was effected through cooling pipes. The plant consists of an oil expeller, a filter press, and a conveyor unit and works on a single feed, single stage compression principle with a throughput capacity of 30 kg/h and effective capacity of 16 kg/h. The plant mathematical model is derived and simulation on flow through hydraulic transformer performed using SIMULINK. The experimental results not only agree with theoretical analysis but also appears to be very efficient in energy saving and recuperation.