Electrostatic Conditioning of Vegetable Oil and Biodiesel

从油菜籽、大豆和其他种子中生产石油是能源密集型的，在炼油过程中会损失大量的石油。精炼大豆的产油量增加2%，就可以生产足够养活1.2亿人的石油，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。加拿大的菜籽油年产量为360万吨(每年267亿美元)。在加拿大提取的种子油以粗制、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、味道、颜色和其他质量方面。炼油损失从石油的2%到5%不等(加拿大为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高压电场进行清洗，这种电场可以聚集和去除纳米尺寸的油粒。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，利用静电场辅助凝聚和固定这些纳米级的污染物，可以在没有添加剂的情况下精炼植物油。静电精炼还没有在商业上应用于食用油。我们假设静电场可以直接或与纳米级的吸附剂一起精炼植物油。我们建议研究静电场和纳米吸着剂作为精炼植物油和减少精炼损失的策略。我们的目标是：检测榨油和溶剂抽出油中的油杂质，以及从油菜籽中制备的改性油。测定电场对压榨和溶剂浸出生产的未精炼植物油的影响。将模型污染物添加到高度精炼的甘油三酯中，以研究精炼。开发数学模型来模拟油污在电场中的行为。确定真正的未精炼油通过电场对油品性质和少量油品成分的影响。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，将评估在精炼中使用具有非常高比表面积的细颗粒吸着剂的潜力。获得有关油中颗粒行为的知识将有助于将这些物质从油中分离出来。最终目标将是开发一种更传统的精炼方法，通过使用静电场来增强吸收剂的精炼。菜籽油是加拿大最大的此类食品介电产品，拟议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.