Sunflower Oil,Sunflower Seed Process

Sunflower oil is second widely used edible oil rank only second to soybean oil. The high ratio of polyunsaturated-to-saturated fatty acids makes sunflower oil a premium salad oil. It contains a small amount of high melting wax which must be removed to avoid settling problems. It is possible to produce a brilliant, dewaxed, deodorized sunflower oil with over a 100-hr cold test at 0 ℃.

This quality oil can be produced by conventional caustic refining, dewaxing, bleaching and deodorization. A quality finished oil may also be produced by dewaxing and steam refining. This paper reviews various methods for processing sunflower oil from the crude state through the finished, dewaxed, deodorized salad oil.

Sunflower seed is generally processed according to the following steps:

• Sunflower seed preparation and cleaning
• Dehulling
• Physical pressing of the sunflower seed with subsequent hexane extraction of the remaining oil in the meal
• Degumming
• Refining
• Bleaching
• Dewaxing
• Deodorization
• Storage