Perlit oil-fat industry
Perlit
Perlite is light and inert material. Perlitic products are made from amorphous volcanogenic aluminosilicate rock, having very specific properties. Mineral structure contains water, which is expanding under heat, transforming to steam and forms foaming structure.
Perlitic ore is used in building industry as filling material. Unusual combination of foaming structure and inertness permits to use expanded unpowdered perlite for cryogenic insulation, hydroponics, in light construction mix and texture coatings.
Due to combination of inert composition and uneven structure («crushed glass»), expanded powdered perlite is used in liquids filtration, very saturated with suspended particles, ensuring high efficiency of the process. Perlite filter aids have better potential to trap significant amount of suspended particles without filter blocking.
In oil-fat production perlite is primarily used for winterization process – creation of crystallization centers of waxes and then in filtration – for effective removing of precipitated waxes.
The key challenges in the vegetable oil filtration are:
- Varying amount of suspended particles which should be to remove
- Nature of these suspended particles which obstruct the filtration (wax, gummies and semisolid substances)
- Viscous nature of vegetable oils, subject for filtration
Filtration of vegetable oils can be conducted with the use of kieselguhr and perlite. The decision about which of these materials will be applied depends on the customer. Perlite by Imerys company specially designed for oil-fat production has many advantages over usual perlite, key of them are high wet density and high pore volume which makes possible to hold solid wax particles and other components.
Perlite by Imerys company is presented by wide range of products which were made at deposits of Spain, Italy, Turkey and France.