How does it work

The prepared feedstock (flakes, expandates or press cakes) enters the extractor through the feeding hopper and a plug screw conveyor. The feeding rate is controlled by level control in the hopper.

The material falls in the first cell of the rotating basket which contains up to 18 different compartments and rotates slowly in the fully enclosed outer shell. The drive for the rotating basket is fully mounted outside the outer shell for easy access and maintenance.

Hexane is sprayed counter-current on the different cells of the basket to extract the oil by the immersion extraction principle. This ensures a very efficient extraction and low residual oil content in the extracted material. Furthermore, a long dripping time ensures low residual hexane content in the extracted meal going to the desolventiser-toaster (DT).

The extracted material is collected in a large hopper below the two discharging compartments. This creates a sufficient buffer between the extractor (working semi-continuous) and the DT (working continuously).

The miscella (mixture oil-hexane) is filtered over a large internal screen to take out most of the solid impurities before the miscella is sent to the distillation – hexane recovery section.

The Reflex extractor has a low energy consumption thanks to lower flaking costs due to thicker flakes and lower desolventising costs by low residual hexane content in the extracted material. The design is simple, but robust and very reliable with minimal moving parts inside the extractor, which allows minimal downtime and maintenance.