Intensified degumming of crude soybean oil using cavitational reactors

A novel cavitation assisted degumming approach for the purification of crude soybean oil in terms of the removal of the total phospholipid content has been reported in the work with a detailed study into the effect of operating parameters such as temperature, hydrogen peroxide loading and introduction of ozone gas at varying flow rate. Ultrasonic horn, ultrasonic bath and hydrodynamic cavitation reactors have been used for comparing the efficacy of different types of cavitational reactors. Initially, extent of degumming was quantified at different temperatures and 60 °C was established as optimum to give significant extent of degumming in terms of phospholipids removal. Degumming in the presence of ozone gas gave unsatisfactory results because of the specific physical and chemical properties of crude soybean oil. Combination of ultrasound and hydrogen peroxide resulted in complete phospholipid degradation at capacity of 250 ml at optimized temperature in 100 min of treatment. Ultrasonic horn and bath were also used at 1 L operating volume and the extent of degumming was found to be 90.81% and 93.50% respectively. For large scale studies, hydrodynamic cavitation was operated at 4 bar pressure using slit venturi as the cavitating device which gave 93.65% as the extent of degumming. Overall, intensified degumming approach for processing of crude soybean oil was demonstrated to yield high quality oil in terms of the reduced phospholipids content. Cavitation based degumming process can be an excellent alternative approach to the conventional method with major benefits like reduction in time and energy requirements as demonstrated in the present work.