Enhanced chemical deacidification of crude soybean oil by rotating packed bed reactor

Abstract

Chemical deacidification is a key process for vegetable oil refining, but its efficiency is limited by the liquid–liquid mass transfer performance of reaction system. Here, a mathematical model containing mass transfer and reactions for the chemical deacidification process was developed at first. The modeling results quantitatively revealed the effect of mass transfer on deacidification efficiency and deacidification reaction time. Then, rotating packed bed (RPB) reactor was firstly applied to enhance the chemical deacidification due to its excellent heterogonous mass transfer performance. The effect of different operating conditions on the deacidification efficiency was systematically investigated. Under the optimal conditions, 99.85% deacidification efficiency was obtained after continuous treatment by RPB reactor. Comparing with traditional stirred tank reactor, the reaction time was reduced from tens of minutes to less than 1 s in RPB. Meanwhile excess alkali consumption was avoided. This work demonstrates an efficient and promising technique for vegetable oil refining.