ALCON Process

TABLE 9. Composition (%) of Lecithin from Normal Soy Oil, Alcon Process, and Membrane-Separated Oils. 

Phospholipid Lecithins from Normal Soy Oil Lecithins from Alcon-process Lecithins from Membrane Process... 

Expanders also inactivate catabolic enzymes due to heat, just as cooking does in the ALCON process. Both the expanding and the cooking of flakes increase the levels and types of phosphatides present in the crude oil, but the phosphatides are more hydratable and more easily removed during water degumming. Expanders can affect the quality of edible lecithin, especially in the formation of white haze. Cooked or expanded soybean flakes need to be dried to < 10% before solvent extracting to avoid color reversion (Erickson, 1995a). 

In the simplest case, used with high-quality low-phosphatide oils, for example some lauric acid oils, some tallows and soybean oil from the Alcon process (Kock, 1983), the crude oil is simply bleached with 1.0-1.5% of an activated bleaching earth at 90-110°C for 15-30 minutes and filtered. In an extension of this process the oil is first intimately contacted with phosphoric acid and/or citric acid solutions before the oil is dried and bleached. This process is used on poorer qualities of the above oils and on oils containing up to 50 ppm of phosphorus, for example, palm oil (Young, 1982) and crude degummed rape-... 

ALCON ALCON process for preparation and/or rough-pressing... 

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