The use of palm fruit to extract edible and usable oil has been practiced across continents for centuries, and it remains one of the primary export commodities for Malaysia. Malaysia has been a big part player in the palm oil industry, with an estimated 5% of global productions as of 2006. Malaysia produced 17.7 million tonnes of palm oil in 2008 and is currently the second largest palm oil producer.
Palm oil is extracted from the fruit of the oil palm 'Elaeis guineensis' and palm kernel oil is derived from the seed of the oil palm. Palm oil has been used as a primary cooking ingredient in most countries as it contains less cholesterol compared to conventional cooking oil.
Palm oil use for daily activities has been widely advocated due to its lower costs and also its high oxidative stability when used in cooking. Palm kernel cakes, which are the leftovers of the palm fruit after extraction has been done is also very useful. Palm kernel cakes are widely used as animal feed for cattle for fattening and supplementary feeding due to its high protein content. It can also be used as a source of biomass to fuel up boilers for generating electricity.
The primary part of the industry would be the extraction of the palm oil from the palm fruit. For this particular purpose, specific machines known as oil expellers are used to derive the oil from the seed. The machine consists of an expeller and a screw press machine with a pressing chamber where palm seeds are fed.
This is a delicate process where the machine used pressure and friction from the screw press to transport as well as compress the oil seeds. Oil is then processed from a small opening to prevent solid materials or residue of the seeds from contaminating the extracted oil.
The leftovers of the seeds are then processed out form the other end as palm kernel cakes. There are generally two types of oil expellers - full press expeller and pre press expeller. Full press expellers are used by smaller mills whereas pre press expellers are implemented by large scale oil extraction companies.
There are many advantages of incorporating these oil expellers into the oil processing line. These expellers can help mills and companies achieve an optimum oil yield at low operating costs while incurring less direct costs.
Oil expellers also have the ability to crush all types of edible and non edible palm oil seeds. Palm kernel expeller is a by-product of the crushing and extraction of oil from seeds to gather palm kernel cakes. With the use of pre press expellers, palm kernel expellers are sometimes used along with the machine to gather leftover palm kernel cakes as a separate product.
These palm seed residues would then be sold as a by-product of palm oil to agricultural industries as a feed for ruminants. PGEO group provides quality palm kernel expellers to go along with the oil expeller machines to provide quality assured palm kernel cakes for their specific uses.
