Customer background: Our client is a renowned century-old food enterprise in Germany, specializing in the production and refining of high-quality edible vegetable oils (particularly rapeseed oil). Its products are renowned for their pure taste and excellent quality standards, and are supplied to major food manufacturers and retail brands in Europe. During the refining process, removing phospholipids, soap residues, proteins, and other minor impurities suspended in the oil is a crucial step to ensure the clarity, stability, and pure flavor of the final oil.
Challenges and solutions in-depth analysis
1. Challenges faced by the client (pain point analysis)
Extremely large temperature fluctuations: Oil temperatures ranging from 5°C to 60°C result in unstable performance of traditional filter aids (such as diatomaceous earth).
At low temperatures (5°C): The viscosity of the oil increases, resulting in poor fluidity. Traditional filtering methods are prone to clogging and the filtering speed is extremely slow.
At high temperatures (60°C): It may affect the physical structure of certain filter aids, reduce the adsorption efficiency, or introduce risks of instability.
Filtering effects vary: Changes in temperature cause fluctuations in filtration accuracy and efficiency, making it difficult to ensure that each batch of products meets a stable high standard.
Poor process continuity: The filtration stage has become the “bottleneck” in the production process, affecting overall efficiency and capacity.
2. The innovative aspect of the solution
Core material innovation: Special food-grade magnesium oxide
Wide temperature range stability: Its physical and chemical structure remains stable within the temperature range of 5°C to 60°C, which is the cornerstone for addressing the pain points.
High specific surface area and porous structure: It provides a vast adsorption surface, which can efficiently capture sub-micron-sized colloidal impurities, soap residues, phospholipids and pigment molecules. This not only removes solid impurities but also improves the color and flavor stability of the oil.
Food-grade safety: Fully compliant with food processing standards, with no safety risks.
Excellent physical properties: The formed filter cake is loose, easy to shape, has a low moisture content, and is convenient for subsequent processing (such as being used as a feed additive, etc.).
Process and equipment collaborative optimization:
This plan is a comprehensive project, not merely a matter of replacing materials:
Pre-coating and slurry mixing process: The magnesium oxide powder is thoroughly mixed with the oil to be filtered, allowing it to adsorb impurities before entering the filter, thereby enhancing the filtration efficiency and effectiveness.
Two-stage filtration equipment configuration:
Level 1: Fully automatic filter press
Function: Perform primary filtration to remove the vast majority of solid impurities and the magnesium oxide that has adsorbed the impurities.
Accuracy: 25-35 µm. By using thickened high-precision filter cloth and relying on the loose filter cake layer formed by magnesium oxide, the filter cloth itself is effectively prevented from getting clogged, ensuring the stability of long-term operation.
Capacity: 15 m³/h (maximum 20 m³/h), matching the production scale of the customer.
Level 2: Bag filter
Function: As an “insurance” or fine filtration, it captures the extremely small particles that may pass through the first stage.
Precision: Up to 1 µm. This ensures that the final finished oil is absolutely clear and free of any residues.
Capacity: 20 m³/h (maximum 30 m³/h), leaving some margin for the front-end processing to ensure smooth production.
The core value brought by the solution
Stability improvement: Completely solved the problem of unstable filtration performance caused by temperature fluctuations, ensuring the high consistency of product quality across different seasons and batches.
Efficiency and Capacity Enhancement:
The filtration speed is stable, which shortens the processing time for a single batch.
The filter cake is easy to remove and the filter cloth is less likely to get clogged, which reduces the time required for equipment cleaning and maintenance shutdown.
Excellent quality:
Visual aspect: The finished oil is much clearer and more transparent.
Flavor and Safety: More thoroughly removes phospholipids and pigments, enhancing the oxidation stability and flavor purity of the oil, and extending its shelf life.
Modernization of processes: By adopting the combination of “fully automatic filter press + high-precision bag filter”, the filtration process has been made fully automated and finely controlled, aligning with the development direction of modern food industry.
Summary
This case is a prime example of “innovative materials driving process upgrading”. A century-old German oil refining company successfully overcame technical challenges in a wide temperature range by adopting an innovative magnesium oxide filtration solution. Not only did it achieve a leap in production efficiency and product quality, but it also consolidated its leading position in the high-end edible oil market. This solution holds significant reference and learning value for other food and chemical enterprises facing similar temperature-sensitive filtration challenges.
Post time: Oct-24-2025