Journal of AgriSearch, 6(4):181-184 1 2 3* 4 BK YADUVANSHI , TK BHATTACHARYA , SK PATEL AND K KUNDU ISSN : 2348-8808 (Print), 2348-8867 (Online) https://doi.org/10.21921/jas.v6i04.16903 An Open Access International Peer Reviewed Quarterly Optimization of Mechanical Oil Extraction of Jatropha Seeds from Oil Expeller 1 AAsstt. Professor, CAE, Anand Agricultural University, Dahod,Gujarat, India 2 Professor, Dept. of FMP Engg., GBPUA&T, Pantnagar, Uttarakhand, India 3 Assoc.Professor, CAE, Dr. Rajendra Prasad Central Agricultural University, Pusa, Bihar, India 4 Scientist, Mechanical Engineering Research and Development Organisation Gill Road, Ludhiana, Punjab, India *Corresponding author email: sppiari@gmail.com A study was carried out to optimize the moisture content of Jatropha seeds expelling through a mechanical expeller. A MERADO developed, 1 TPD mustard oil expeller was used for expelling of whole Jatropha seeds. Moisture levels were started from 14 percent with a step size of 3 percent and continued up to the last increment in oil recovery. Oil recovery, specific power consumption and expeller throughput were taken into consideration for observation. Oil recovery was found maximum 21.1 percent at 23 % moisture content and 21.7 percent at 20 % moisture content for hot water sprinkling. However, the expeller efficiencies on these moisture levels were only 57.96 and 59.6 percent. Residual oil in the cake was minimum 15.8 and 15.2 percent in accordance with maximum oil recovery for cold and hot water sprinkling, respectively. Specific power consumption was found minimum at 20 % moisture content for both the treatments. The throughput of the expeller was observed maximum (6.15 kg/h) up to 17 % moisture content and having no remarkable difference among them for both the treatments. KEYWORDS Oil recovery, Power consumption, Through- put, Expeller Efficiency. ABSTRACT INTRODUCTION 181 J atropha L. ) is used for various purposes like erosion control, (Jatropha curcas living fence, source of firewood, etc. The bark of L. is rich in Jatropha curcas tannin and used for the production of dye. Leaves have been used for the rearing of silkworm and in medicine as an anti-inflammatory substance ( ; Openshaw, 2000 Basha et al., 2009). Seed is used for making insecticide, soap and varnish. Seed cakes are used as fertilizer as well as a solid fuel or in the production of biogas. Due to the depletion of fossil fuels and the greenhouse effect, the application as biofuel is probably the most interesting from both economical and ecological points of views ( ). Beerens, 2007 One of the most promising renewable and independent energy sources in rural areas is Jatropha oil ( and ). It is Kumar and Sharma, 2008 Makkar and Becker, 2009 non-edible oil. Thus, it will not impair food security issues ( ). As it Pinzi et al., 2009 grows well on dry marginal non-agricultural land, it will not compete with land needed for food production or with nature conservation ( ; Achten et al., 2007 Makkar and Becker, 2009 Pinzi et al., 2009 ; ). Jatropha is considered a more sustainable feedstock for energy production than any other food-related crop such as palm, rapeseed, soybean or sunflower ( ). Pinzi et al., 2009 The physical, mechanical and chemical properties as well as the potential use of extracted oil from J. as transesterified oil, or as a blend with diesel has been curcas widely studied ( ; ; ; Augustus et al., 2002 Pramanik, 2003 Narayana and Ramesh, 2006 Karaj and Müller, 2010). The calorific value and cetane number of J. oil are curcas similar to diesel, but the density and viscosity are much higher (Namasivayam et al., 2007). Various methods for recovering oil from seeds have been investigated ( ; ). The mechanical oil extraction of J. was Lim et al., 2010 Qian et al., 2010 curcas reported as suboptimal due to lack of knowledge about the best operation parameters ( ). ( ) has reported the use of sunflower Shah et al., 2005 Openshaw 2000 seed mechanical screw presses for extracting J. seed oil as unsuitable due to curcas technical problems and low oil recovery. ( ) has reported results from Beerens 2007 using two mechanical screw presses: a mechanical cylinder press (BT50) and a strainer press ( ). Maximum oil recovery was reported to be 79% Sayyar et al., 2009 for BT50 screw press and 87% for Sayyar strainer press after dual passing. Seed conditioning processes, i.e. grading, drying, cleaning, and further moisture addition, before mechanical oil extraction from the oilseeds, have been found useful for better oil expelling. Among all the parameters, moisture is the most effective parameter for the expelling. Decreasing the moisture content from 7.8 to 2.3 percent was found to increase the proportion of oil extracted from 31.4 to 49.6 percent. The effect of moisture level on extraction efficiency may be related to the mucilage development in the outer epidermal cells. Addition of water results in swelling of mucilage, which in turn may produce a cushioning effect leading to reduced rupturing of the seed coat and internal tissue. The cumulative impact of all these results in the hurdled flow of oil from cotyledon tissue. Concerning the optimization of oil extraction efficiency, neither the influence of different settings of the screw press nor the resulting dependent factors were reported in other studies. Therefore, this study was aiming to analyze different ARTICLE INFO Received on Accepted on Published online 03-04-2019 09-10-2019 03-12-2019 : : :