Local processing of oil palm

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Palm trees are naturally endowed trees, naturally endowed because factually all parts or components are useful for one thing or the others. starting from stem which can be used for building roof,the branches are used to produced basket and fashion bags,while the leaves is used in making brooms for sweeping or removing cobwebs.

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the palm fruit. source

From palm trees also we tapped wine called palmwine which can be drink naturally or converted to other form of wines and finally we have palm fruits where palm oil is extracted.Palm fruit just like any other fruits are produced and harvested annually from palm trees to produced palm oil.

Palm oil is an eatable vegetable oil derived from riped palmfruit.It is mostly used in food preparation,infact it is major ingredient in soup preparation and also in production of soaps and chemicals.

Palmoil like any others oil has its health benefits and effects as it can be used to prevent cancer,used in prevention of vitamin A deficiency,also it used for malaria treatment and also to control high blood pressure.

The major effect of palm oil is in high saturated fats.palm oil compared with others oil has relatively high saturated fats which can be associated with chronic health conditions and heart related disease.

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The palm fruit processing machine

I visited the processing site even though the processing has been temporary halt because of rain simply because it normally difficult to climped palmtrees and havested at this period. but I was able to seeing some of equipments and machine used.

The firtst stage in palm oil processing is to harvested the palm fruits from palm trees. There are different species of palmtrees.The local one which are naturally tall and the breed one which are naturally short in nature.

The tall one's are the most common in my area are such, there is need for climbing rope together with small axe to havested it.palm fruit are normally fused together as a bunch and two, three or four bunches can be havested on a single tree depending on it size. Afer this,each bunches will be further pieces to extract them.

IMG_20210826_151454_590.jpgpalm fruit washing center where processed fruits is washed and extracted for oil.

The next stage is to moved these extracted palm fruits to the processing site.At the site the extracted palm fruits is loaded in barrel like structure where it will be subjected to intensive heat in order to soften it.

The heating process may take hours or even days depending on the volumes,after it has been thoroughly heated the cooked or boiled palm fruits is then loaded in a machine where it will be grinded. The machine has a distillation process whereby after grinding, the oil together with shaft is separated from kernel.

The kernel will be taken to some place while oil together with shaft will be taking for further processing.

There is a place in processing site designated for washing ,it is called washing chamber. This chamber is designed in a circular or rectangular shape with arrangements of blocks to certain hieght and inner layer would be screeded and opening will be created to channel water in and out.

The oil together with shaft would be taking to this inner layer and enough water will be added.At this stage all shaft will be floated and removed leaving water and oil only.
What happened next is to stirred the water vigorously to allow the accumulation of palm oil on water surface.

This accumulated oil will be taken or removed by small container to another place. The more this water is stirred the higher the oil accumulation.After all the oil has been taken from water,the remaining ordinary water will be allow to flow out of washing chamber.

IMG_20210905_184743_013.jpg The final product. Palm oil

Here comes the final stage,the palm oil removed from washing chamber will be poured to another heating barrel where it will be subjected to another round of heating ,at the end of this, main palm oil will be at the top while other form of impurities will settled at bottom layer.

Finally,the main oil is poured out into various Jerry can and it then ready for human consumption and for other purposes.

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3 comments
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I've heard that no part of he palm tree is wasted. Every part is good for something. Unfortunately, Nigeria use to be the highest grower of palm tree but not anymore. Thanks for sharing this

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