In fish oil fractionation, the crystallizer is the core equipment determining product quality and yield. Fish oil is rich in long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (EPA and DHA), with crystallization temperatures far lower than those of palm oil, demanding exceptionally precise crystallization control.

Ocean's oil fractionation production line uses an internal coil crystallizer design, while some conventional solutions still rely on jacket-type crystallizers. The difference directly impacts production capacity, energy consumption, and product quality.

Advantages of Coil Design:

The internal coil, made of 304 stainless steel, is distributed throughout the entire crystallizer volume, providing several times greater heat exchange area than jacket designs. Combined with a frequency-controlled agitator and scrapers, the coil ensures uniform oil temperature throughout the tank, with temperature differentials controlled within a very narrow range.

Precise temperature control means synchronous nucleation and uniform crystal growth, resulting in more complete solid-liquid separation during filtration and higher olein yield.

Problems with Jacket Design:

The heat exchange area of a jacket-type crystallizer is limited by the tank's external surface, making it severely inadequate for larger tanks. More critically, jacket heating typically uses thermal oil as the medium — if corrosion or seal failure occurs, thermal oil leaks into the fish oil, contaminating the entire batch and causing significant financial loss.

Furthermore, if the jacket portion uses carbon steel instead of stainless steel, the salt and moisture in fish oil accelerate corrosion, further increasing leakage risk.

Actual Performance Differences:

At the same capacity, the coil-design crystallizer achieves shorter batch cooling times, more batches per day, and substantial annual energy savings. More importantly, it completely eliminates the risk of whole-batch contamination from thermal oil leakage — a critical consideration for high-value fish oil production.

Choosing coil design means higher capacity, lower energy consumption, and safer operation.

Ocean provides full-chain services from process design and equipment manufacturing to installation and commissioning, delivering efficient and reliable crystallization systems for clients' fractionation lines.