Any vegetable oil, before hitting the shelves of the supermarkets and kitchen storage cabinets, undergoes a large number of processes in a dedicated facility for Dewaxing & Winterization of vegetable edible oil. All vegetable oils are purified, filtered, and made free from all types of contaminants to be consumable for human beings. This blog discusses one of the most important processes of vegetable oil refining called dewaxing:
Winterization and Dewaxing
Winterization, also known as dewaxing, is one of the most important processes in the chemical-based refining of vegetable oils. Carried out in a facility for Dewaxing & Winterization of vegetable edible oil, dewaxing or winterization is performed to remove a thick and stout component from the vegetable oils called wax.
A chromatographic strategy is used to quantify the crystallizable wax content of crude oils such as cottonseed, corn, and sunflower. This methodology can also be applied to some other vegetable oils when needed. In the preparative chromatographic step, a silica gel adsorbent is laid over a silver nitrate-impregnated silica gel to disconnect the waxy portion and then inspected through the gas-based chromatography.
The wax achieved this way contains hydrocarbons and different other mixtures with gas-based chromatographic retention times accompanying waxes with chain lengths C34−C42. These mixtures are short-chain soaked waxes in natural oils, for example. In seed-based oils like sunflower, soybean, or groundnut, the mixtures alluded to as "solvent esters" are identified as monounsaturated substances, esters of long-chain soaked unsaturated fats, and monounsaturated alcohol. Such waxes are not found in vegetable oils such as corn or rice bran oils. Dewaxing is considered to be necessary for oils like corn, cottonseed, and sunflower because of the heavy wax contents in them.
Concluding Note
Performed in a facility for the of Dewaxing & Winterization of vegetable edible oil backed by
Membrane Filter for dry fractionation of Palm oil, dewaxing is an important part of the chemical refining of vegetable oil. This process helps remove not only impurities from the oil but also all the agents that make oil thicker and unpleasant. Dewaxing also helps in making the wanted fat modifications as per the standards set by the government for the food processing industry.