Electrostatic Conditioning of Vegetable Oil and Biodiesel

从油菜、大豆和其他种子生产油是能源密集型的，并且在炼油过程中损失了大量的油。精炼大豆的油产量增加2%，将生产足够养活1.2亿人的油，保护450万英亩的农田，防止160万吨温室气体排放，每年节省10亿美元。加拿大的菜籽油产量为每年360万吨（每年267亿美元）。在加拿大提取的种子油以原油、部分精炼或精炼的形式出售。炼油通过去除颗粒、微生物、磷脂和游离脂肪酸（FFA）来改善气味、风味、颜色和其他质量方面。炼油损失占石油的2%~ 5%（在加拿大超过1.5亿美元）。创新的炼油方法可以减少炼油损失。* 低介电工业油可以通过聚集和去除纳米尺寸油颗粒的高压电场来清洁。菜籽油和大豆油也是低介电流体，因此，许多极性植物油杂质是可能在静电场中聚集的纳米颗粒。从理论上讲，植物油可以在没有添加剂的情况下通过使用静电场来帮助聚结和固定这些纳米尺寸的污染物来精炼。静电精炼尚未应用于商业食用油。* 我们假设静电场可以直接精炼植物油或与纳米级吸收剂结合。我们建议研究静电场和纳米级吸附剂作为精炼植物油和减轻精炼损失的策略。我们的目标是：测定压榨油和溶剂提取油以及由菜籽油制备的改性油中的油杂质。确定电场对压榨和溶剂萃取产生的未精炼植物油的影响。将模型污染物添加到高度精制的甘油三酯中以研究精制。开发数学模型以模拟电场中的油污染物行为。确定使真实的未精炼油通过电场对油的性质和次要油成分的存在的影响。制定改进的炼油方案，最大限度地减少石油损失，最大限度地提高石油产量。确定使用静电场从油中浓缩植物化学物质的潜力。最后，将评估在精炼中利用具有非常高表面积的细颗粒吸收剂的潜力。所获得的关于油中颗粒行为的知识将有助于从油中分离这些材料。最终的目标是开发一种更传统的方法，通过使用静电场增强吸收剂进行精炼。菜籽油是加拿大最大的此类食品电介质产品，提出的先进高效炼油策略还有许多其他潜在用途。

Production of oil from canola, soy and other seed is energy intensive and substantial amounts of oil are lost in oil refining. A two percent increase in oil yield from refining soy would produce enough oil to feed 120 million people, conserve 4.5 million acres of farmland, prevent 1,600,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions and save $1 billion dollars annually. Canadian production of canola oil is 3.6 million tonnes per year ($26.7 billion annually). Seed oil extracted in Canada is sold in crude, partially refined or refined forms. Oil refining improves odour, flavour, colour, and other quality aspects by removing particles, micro-organisms, phospholipids, and free fatty acids (FFA). Refining losses range from 2~5 % of the oil (>$150 million in Canada). Innovative oil refining methods can mitigate oil refining losses. ***Low dielectric industrial oils may be cleaned by high voltage electric fields that aggregate and remove nanometer size oil particles. Canola and soy oil are also low dielectric fluids, therefore, many polar vegetable oil impurities are nanoparticles that would likely aggregate in an electrostatic field. Theoretically, vegetable oil could be refined without additives by using electrostatic fields to assist in coalescing and immobilizing these nanometer size contaminants. Electrostatic refining has not been applied to food oils in commerce. ***We hypothesize that electrostatic fields can refine vegetable oils directly or in conjunction with nanometer scale absorbents. We propose to investigate electrostatic fields, and nanoscale absorbents as a strategy for refining vegetable oils and mitigating refining losses. Our goals are to: Determine oil impurities in pressed and solvent extracted oils, and modified oils prepared from Canola. Determine the impact of electric fields on unrefined vegetable oils produced by pressing and solvent extraction. Add model contaminants to highly refined triglycerides to study refining. Develop mathematical models to emulate oil contaminant behaviour in electric fields. Determine the impact of passing real unrefined oils through electric fields on oil properties and the presence of minor oil constituents. Develop modified refining protocols that minimize oil losses and maximize oil yield. Determine the potential to use electrostatic fields to concentrate phytochemicals from oil. Finally, the potential to utilize fine particulate absorbents with very high surface areas in refining will be evaluated. Knowledge gained regarding the behavior of particles in oils will aid in separating these materials from the oils. The final goal will be to develop a more conventional approach to refining with absorbents that is augmented by the use of electrostatic fields.***Canola oil is the largest such food dielectric product in Canada there are many other potential uses of the proposed advanced efficient oil refining strategies.