Refining Guide: Physical Refining vs Chemical Refining – Which Fits Your Crude Oil?

In modern edible oil and animal fat processing, physical refining and chemical refining are the two mainstream industrial processes. Many new investors are confused about which technology to choose for palm oil, sunflower oil, soybean oil, and animal tallow production. The two processes differ greatly in production cost, oil yield, final oil quality and raw material adaptability. Choosing the right solution directly determines your factory’s profit margin and product market competitiveness.

Core Definition & Working Principle Differences

Chemical Refining

Chemical refining adopts traditional alkali neutralization deacidification technology. It removes free fatty acids in crude oil through chemical reaction, and completes degumming, deacidification, decolorization and deodorization in sequence. It is a classic and mature process suitable for low-acid-value crude oil materials. The whole process relies on chemical reagent neutralization reaction to achieve impurity and acid removal.

Physical Refining

Physical refining is an upgraded green process. It removes free fatty acids and odor substances through high-temperature vacuum steam distillation without adding a large amount of chemical alkali. It features pure physical separation, no chemical residue, and is specially designed for high acid value crude oil such as palm oil, waste cooking oil and animal fat.

Key Advantages & Application Scenarios

Chemical Refining: Stable for Low-Acid Oil

Chemical refining has stable treatment effect and low equipment requirements, ideal for soybean oil, peanut oil and other low-acid crude oil. Its main advantage is thorough impurity removal and stable finished oil quality. The main disadvantage is high material consumption, large oil loss, easy soap stock generation, and relatively higher long-term operating costs.

Physical Refining: High Profit for High-Acid Oil

Physical refining is the preferred process for most African and Central Asian local crude oil. It perfectly solves the problems of high acid value and heavy impurities in local palm oil and animal tallow. Without alkali consumption, it effectively reduces oil loss, improves comprehensive oil yield, and produces higher-purity edible oil with natural nutrition retained. It also simplifies subsequent wastewater treatment, more environmentally friendly and cost-effective for long-term operation.

Dingsheng Machine’s Dual-Refining Technology & Equipment Strengths

Different from single-process equipment manufacturers,Dingsheng Machine independently develops and manufactures both physical and chemical refining complete production lines, covering 1TPH to 1000TPH full tonnage. We can flexibly match the most suitable process scheme according to customers’ raw oil quality, solving the pain point of one-type equipment cannot adapt to diverse raw materials.

Professional Process Customization Advantage

Our refining lines adopt standardized four-stage process: degumming, deacidification, decolorization and deodorization. For chemical refining, we optimize alkali dosage control to reduce oil loss and reagent waste. For physical refining, we upgrade vacuum system and low-temperature distillation technology to avoid oil nutrient damage, ensure zero chemical residue, and make finished oil meet EU and international food safety standards.

High-Adaptation Equipment Features

All core refining tanks and supporting equipment are made of high-quality corrosion-resistant stainless steel, with stable operation, low failure rate and long service life. The semi-automatic and fully automatic control systems are optional, suitable for small startup factories and large industrial production projects, and adaptable to complex local power and factory conditions in Africa, Central Asia and other regions.

Full-Cycle One-Stop Turnkey Service

Dingsheng Machine is a professional full-set oil processing solution provider. Our business covers oil seed pretreatment, pressing, solvent extraction and crude oil refining. With 20+ years of overseas project experience, we have successfully delivered numerous oil plant projects in Nigeria, Uzbekistan, Burundi, Tanzania and other countries.

We provide free factory layout design, process flow customization, on-site installation and commissioning, local worker technical training and lifelong spare parts supply and remote after-sales service, helping customers quickly complete project commissioning and stable production.

Contact Dingsheng Machine

Call: +86-159 3716 3029

Email: company@dingmachinery.com

Visit: http://www.dsoilpress.com