Hey!
I’m gonna de-gum some stuff. I read the citric-acid degummimg tek thread.
I’ve been using methanol for winterizing and figured I might as well include that step in there. Is there any difference in acidifying methanol vs ethanol?
Do I just add some acid while winterizing, leave overnight, and filter it all? Then neutralize and proceed as normal?
Shouldnt be any different whatsoever, but remember in ethanol you have minimum 5% water present and this helps to facilitate the reaction. You will probably need to add some water to the solution.
What I figured 
thx!
What I wonder about is whether the hydrolyzed phosphatides produced from the degumming reaction are more soluble in methanol than the phosphatides they were produced from. Which seem to drop out of methanol even without degumming action but I have no data to support that claim.
Doesnt really matter, because if you do plan to brine wash the citric acid out of the solution the phospholipids will most definitely be removed more completely thru that route.
Yeah I know methanol is a more thorough dewaxer than Ethanol. I was half wondering if I even needed to degum the winterized methanol.
I guess I can do one, then the other. To see if the degum is necessary
Measure the finished products, one citric acid degummed and the other one just methanol winterized. That should give u the data we need.
What I meant in my last post is that since the hydrolyzed phospholipids are water soluble I wonder if they dissolve in methanol better before or after the degumming reaction is carried out. Because methanol is very polar.
I think the difficult part of this experiment is how low % wise of mass the gums account for. I think it’s only a couple %
Yep it would take playing around with a fairly large batch to make data collection much much easier on yourself.
Good thing these are solvents we already use and ur product will go to distillate.
You have to check your PH after, the enzymes are better IMO with less work. If you dont neutralize the acid you’ll have isomerization problems
the degumming clay sold by carbon chem requires no water to work and uses citric acid to degum, are you sure youd even need water when using citric acid? The reason you use water with the enzymes is to hydrate them, i was told by shadownaught when he gave me my citric acid degumming sample that you can add it straight into your crude at 70c and itll work
Someone correct me if I am incorrect, please.
You still need water if you’re just using citric acid alone. The acid will disassociate phosphatide salts, but you need water to dilute/dissolve them properly.
I imagine that if you’re using an acidic clay, like you mentioned, then water is not necessary (as the disassociated salts can be adsorbed in parts) - but I would think this only works for very low “gum” content.
@Shadownaught or someone else can shed more light on the clay, I’m sure.
Clay has an internal moisture content so that may have sonething to do with not needing added water. This clay system is used in soybean oil without added water as well.