Degumming of rapeseed and sunflower oils

Crude extracted or pressed rapeseed and sunflower oils contain phospholipids, which must be removed from oil during refining process. For removing phospholipids following methods were used: water, acid, and TOP degumming process (TOP is a Dutch acronym derived from “Totaal Ontslijmings Process ” meanining total degumming process). After the water degumming, the amount of phosphorus was reduced to 70.4 mg kg-1 in extracted rapeseed oil and to 60.9 mg kg-1 in pressed one. The residual amount of phosphorus in extracted and pressed sunflower oils was 56.9 mg kg-1 and 50.1 mg kg-1 respectively. However, acid degumming process reduced the amount of phosphorus below to 11.8 mg kg-1 in extracted and pressed sunflower oils and below to 21.4 mg kg-1 in extracted and pressed rapeseed oils. The most effective degumming process was TOP degumming, that allowed to decrease the amount of phosphorus in pressed rapeseed oil to 9.6 mg kg-1 and in pressed sunflower oil to 4.5 mg kg-1. In extracted oils the results were for rapeseed oil 15.1 mg P per kg and 10.6 mg P per kg of sunflower oil. However, TOP degumming process can not reduce the amount of P, Mg and Ca under 15.1 mg kg-1, 15.6 mg kg-1 and 3.2 mg kg-1 in extracted rapeseed oil, because of the high content of these elements in initial crude oil