Oilseed crushing

Production of rapeseed oil and ExPro meal  

Business sector Feed Materials processes and markets vegetable protein and feed fats to the animal feed industry.

Sweden's entire rapeseed harvest is delivered to Feed Materials; considerable volumes that are then supplemented by deliveries from neighbouring areas. Rapeseeds are received, subjected to a thorough quality control and then stored in silos. The raw material then passes through a screening machine and rests in an intermediate storage before being forwarded to the crushing and extraction plant. Before entering the production halls the seeds have to pass through another screening process plus a magnetic separator, to remove any possible metallic contaminations remaining from the two previous cleaning steps.

The seeds are now steamed in a conditioner to facilitate further processing. They proceed to a rolling mill, where the seeds are crushed into thin flakes. These are then heated in a boiler, before the fat is extracted from the seeds in a screw press. The rapeseed oil is separated from the seed cake, which is what remains from the seeds once they exit the screw press.

The seed cake moves on to an extractor where hexane is added to extract most of the remaining fat from the seed cake in a chemical process. Once the very last oil drop has been extracted from the original seed, only the rapeseed meal contains any hexane residues. To remove this hexane, which is recycled for the next extraction process, we use heat and steam. The rapeseed oil obtained in the extraction process is cleansed of any potential hexane residues in an evaporation process where the rapeseed oil is treated with steam in a vacuum. The pressed oil and the extracted oil are then stored separately.

Once the rapeseed meal has passed through the toaster to remove all hexane, all meal proceeds to the ExPro plant to undergo a patented process characterised by high temperature and high pressure. Thanks to this ExPro process, the protein structure of the meal is altered in a way to enhance protein availability for ruminants. When the meal exits the ExPro plant it is first cooled and dried, then forwarded for storage in a special silo.