Avocado Oil Extraction Process

Avocado Oil Extraction Process

To make high-quality avocado oil, it is recommended to use Cold Pressing. In the late 1990’s, a processing company in New Zealand began production of cold-pressed avocado oil (CPAO) to be sold as culinary oil for salads and cooking. Today the oil is produced also in Chile, South Africa, Kenya, Israel and other countries. Subsequently they built a complete processing plant to extract CPAO from the avocado fruit.

Generally speaking, the avocado oil making process is divided into three stages:

1.        Pre-processing:

Ø  the whole fruits are washed in a two-stage washing system. The first washing is performed by immersion in order to remove dust from the surface of the avocados. Then washing fruits a second time by brushing them. The end of this stage is to dry the surface moisture of the cleaned avocados.

2.        Pressing:

Ø  the elevator takes then the fruits into the crushing machine, which will mash the avocados into paste. This approach is important to enable to optimise oil extraction. After crushing, the avocado mash is pumped into the section equipped with malaxers. This kind of kneading machine consists of a central screw stir, which allows to mix the mash slowly and continously into small oil drops, which are then released during fruit milling merge into large drops.

3.        Filtration and oil-water separation:

the separation of oil from solid and liquid phases is done using a screw extrusion separator. This device exploits the way of squeezing to separate continuously a mixture of particulate solids and liquids with phases having different densities. That is to say, the mash is separated into liquid ( oil & vegetation water) and solids (exhausted pulp and residual skin). In the separated solid, some oil will remain, so it needs to be pressed again with a hydraulic press. Regarding the liquid part, it needs to be dehydrated after filtration.