Experimental behavior of crude soybean oil in alco-holic solvents: Miscibility temperature and chilling separation effectiveness

Abstract

Experimental information about the behavior of crude soybean oil with alcohol solvents, useful in the design of oil extraction and separation processes, is provided. The miscibility temperature of crude soybean oil in ethanol, isopropanol and their mixture (M) at different oil/alcohol ratios (OAR), and both the oil equilibrium distribution coefficients (keq) between formed phases and the amount of oil recov-ered (OR) from the chilled miscellas were determined. In the analyzed OAR range, the highest miscibility temperatures were 78, 40 and 55 °C for ethanol, iso-propanol and M, respectively. Generally, OR and keq changed significantly with the solvent, the chilling temperature and the OAR. By using ethanolic miscel-las, a more effective separation was reached, being OR slightly changed with the chilling temperature. The validation of the chilling separation, performed using miscellas obtained from the ethanol extraction of soybean oil, demonstrated that other extracted compounds did not affect the separation yield.