Profit increase through maximum oil extraction
NIR-Online® for oil mills and refineries
BUNGE Oil Mill: Production control with NIR-Online® industrial spectrometers
Abstract
Rape seed processing may be described with an easy
bottom line: The more oil extracted from seeds, the
higher the profit. Bunge Deutschland GmbH (Figure 1),
an international leading company specialized on oil and
grain seeds, successfully benefits from maximum oil
extraction through real-time process-control with NIROnline® industrial spectrometers.
Figure 2: NIR-Online® industrial spectrometer
sensor
Figure 1: With a capacitiy of 1.1 million tons of processed
oilseeds per annum, the Oil Mill Bunge Mannheim is one
of the largest in Europe.
1. Introduction
Bunge Oil Mill Mannheim processes 3,500 tons of rape
seeds every day utilizing two indentical production
lines. Overall production yields 2,000 tons of rapeseed
meal (which is further used for feed processing) and
1,500 tons of raw oil (the base for biodiesel and refined
edible oils). In a first step rape seeds are passed
through a press resulting in so-called press cake and
press oil. However, approximately one third of the total
oil still remains within the press cake. Thus, it is further
subjected to an energy and time demanding extraction
process. Optimizing this step in terms of percentage of
residual oil unprofitable to extract - owing to high energy
consumption and labor cost - and maximum oil
exploitation is crucial for Bunge.
2. Optimizing process parameters in real-time
But at what point in time has this percentage been
reached and when has the maximum exploitation of oil
been realized? “Previously, this question could not be
answered satisfyingly, as our analytical methods for
process control were restricted to laboratory methods
such as nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy”,
explains Moritz Lücke, Production Manager at Bunge
Deutschland. “The results of these time-delayed
methods only reflect a given moment in time and,
hence, real-time intervention was not possible.”
After
installation
of
NIR-Online®
industrial
spectrometers (Figure 2) the above described situation
improved dramatically. All units were directly mounted
at the outlet of the press and extractor allowing 24/7
real-time measurement of the oil as well as moisture
content of the press cake. Direct contact with the
product is avoided at all times, as the sensor
successively emits light in the near infrared (NIR) region
through a window. Only reflected light from e.g. a press
cake on a chain conveyer is recorded via photo diode
arrays. As the composition of the reflected light
correlates to the oil and moisture content, the
automatically processed measuring signal is displayed
in real-time to the operators at the Bunge control room.
The NIR-Online® measurement values are directly
integrated into the process control system of Oil Mill
Mannheim and are key to process optimization.
Roland Bauer, Assistant Production Manager for seed
processing at Bunge Germany gives an easy example:
“The higher the moisture content of the press cake, the
more difficult it gets to exploit the oil in the subsequent
extraction step. Assuming the press cake exceeds the
accepted moisture level, the operator at the control
room can directly intervene to ensure that the upstream
rape seeds are subject to stronger drying during steps
of conditioning”. Furthermore, a direct indication about
the final rate of oil exploitation is provided by the
measurement values of the second NIR-Online®
spectrometer, analyzing the rapeseed meal at the end
of the extraction step. Moreover, the integrated
software is characterized by high user friendliness
being especially important for the laboratory team at
Bunge continuously generating reference values for
rape seed processing.
Profit increase through maximum oil extraction
NIR-Online® for oil mills and refineries
BUNGE Oil Mill: Production control with NIR-Online® industrial spectrometers
pressing and extraction process with NIR-Online®
spectrometers.
5. More points of control for more profit
Figure 3: Moritz Lücke, Production Manager, Roland
Bauer, junior Production Manager, and Laboratory
Manager Klaus Klawun (f.l.).
3. Uncritical
environment
operation
in
an
The Bunge Oil Mill in Mannheim / Germany plans the
acquisition of additional NIR-Online® industrial
spectrometers (Figure 4) throughout the course of this
year to monitor steps of refinery in real-time.
Throughout the steps of desliming and neutralization of
the pressed oil these sensors determine the
concentration of phosphorus and free fatty acids. The
potential for improving these processes is significant.
Day by day Bunge produces 1.500 tons of raw oil; 70%
are further processed for generation of biodiesel by an
external company and 30% are used for edible oil
generation at their own production site.
explosive
The extraction of residual oil from a press cake relies
on n-hexane, a highly flammable liquid, as solvent. As
NIR-Online® sensors are available fully ATEX Gas-Ex
certified, they may easily be established even in
potentially explosive environments. This tremendous
advantage is best described by Klaus Klawun, head of
laboratory at Bunge Deutschland:
“Other comparable analytical systems are not vibrationfree and have no ATEX Gas-Ex-certification. Instead,
they are fitted into an explosion-proof cabinet making it
necessary to work with optical fibre in order to reach the
true measurement position. This is quite complex and
results in far weaker measuring impulse and inferior
measuring results compared to an NIR-Online® device."
4. Immediate control and profit increase
Buchi NIR-Online® sensors allow Bunge to completely
control their production process in real-time – starting
from the pressing of the rape seed to the extraction.
Bunge may now directly assess whether the process is
running under optimum conditions, i.e. whether the
maximum amount of oil is exploited from the press
cake. Using NIR-Online® equipment the operator in the
control room is capable of immediately taking corrective
actions to prevent financial losses.
“Traditional analytical methods provide the results after
around one day and in the past we were not able to tell
whether the individual sampling was prone to outlier or
whether the whole process was deficient. We were
virtually operating without knowledge of real-time
information about the process parameters.” stressed
Moritz Lücke.
Those responsible at Bunge (Figure 3) are now aware
regarding the true optimization potential of rape seed
processing giving rise to purposefully increasing profit.
All thanks to continuous real-time control of the
Figure 4: NIR-Online spectrometer with X-Cell and chiller
6. BUNGE Deutschland GmbH
Bunge Germany belongs to the Bunge-Group which is
one of the largest trader and processor of oil- and grain
seeds. The business areas include trading and
processing of agricultural products as well as
production and sales of fertilizers and generation of
foodstuffs.
The Oil Mill Mannheim was founded in 1887 as an
amalgamation of nine smaller oil mills from southern
Germany. Over the following years, the oil mil was
continuously enlarged and modernized. After belonging
to Unilever and Cereol, in 2002, the Oil Mill Mannheim
fell to Bunge-Group and was renamed into “Bunge
Deutschland GmbH” in 2004. With an annual capacity
of 1.1 million tons of oil seed processing; the Oil Mill
Mannheim is one of the largest oil mills in Europe.
7. Outlook
In the meantime BUNGE has adopted NIR-Online
technology in most if their plants across Europe and
started implementation worldwide.
8. Contacts
For more detailed information please contact your local
BUCHI representative or visit our website:
www.buchi.com/nir-online