General discussion of processing edible oil seeds and edible oils

I N a t tempt ing to cover this broad field which ineludes a number of processes and processing steps our discussion of each process must necessarily be brief. We canlmt touch on all the changes that have occurred as our processing methods developed to their present status. However a little of the history of the industry may be interesting and will serve to explain some of the t rends in development. Man ' s first s u c c e s s f u l efforts at obtaining oil f rom oil seeds and the uses of the oils are lost in antiquity. The first record of cottonseed being crushed for oil seems to be contained in old H indu medical books. The method consisted of redueing the seed b y p o u n d i n g and then boiling the mater ial in water for obtaining the oil H. D. Fineher ( 1 ) . Soybean oil has been component of the Chinese diet for close to 5,000 years (2), and the Chinese are said to have obtained oil by crushing seed to a meal under an edgestone, heating the meal in open pans, and pressing in wedge presses (1). A very simple form of the wedge press consisted of a box or container into which were placed bags of the oil-bearing material . Wedges were then driven in beside the bags to apply pressure for expression of the oil. At a later date several types of lever presses and hand-powered screw presses were invented by the Greeks and Romans (3). In our own country several factors combined at the end of the 18th century and dur ing the first half of the 19th century to get the cottonseed crushing indust i t on its way :