With regard to the development of efficient and environmental friendly oilseed processes EthaNa represents an innovative technology which combines a specific dehulling process with a mild ethanolic extraction. The concept, developed by a consortium of research institutes, engineering companies and oilseed processing industry, includes the process development and the transfer of results from laboratory to pilot scale. In order to prepare this technology for industrial use a pilot plant is constructed at Fraunhofer CBP in Leuna/Germany. Pre-liminary tests of the key-equipment showed successfully the benefits of the EthaNa process. These results will be presented.
The first step is a dehulling process using fluidized bed technology with the goal of less than 3% hull content in the canola seed kernels. In a second step, the innovative approach of using peeled canola seed enables the use of a new treatment of breaking the cells combined with an extraction with ethanol. After the removal of the solvent and the separation of the oil and various phases, a high-quality canola-seed-kernel-concentrate is obtained. The mild processing conditions allow the nearly complete elimination of anti-nutritive substances like glucosinulates from the canola-seed-kernel-concentrate without damaging the proteins. At the same time, bioactive compounds can be fed to an additional separation process. The extracted oil has an improved quality and can be considered as a pre-refined oil with significantly less expenditure on the refining process. The protein-rich canola-seed-kernel-concentrate allows a considerable increase of use and value, for example as improved animal feed as well as the development of new applications for canola seed proteins for technical use and for food.
