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| Corn (Maize) |
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| 42 De Smet plants are processing corn oil Origin  Maize comes from Southern America. When the New World was discovered, large cultures of maize in Peru and Mexico were already reported. Then imported in Spain, the culture of the maize expanded all through Southern Europe and from there to Africa and Asia. Today, the USA remains the world’s largest producer.The maize is an annual herbaceous graminaceae with a plain stem; it grows to 2 or 3 m high and has long and large leaves, which are alternate and falling shape. The radicles net does not grow more than 50 cm deep. The male flower is a terminal panicle; the female flowers are grouped in corncobs placed at the armpit of the leaves in the middle part of the plant. Every corncob is surrounded by leaves, which at blooming cover all except the beard. When getting mature, the corn seeds are regularly placed around the axis of the corncob in an elongated cone shape. The number of seeds rows, the length of the supporting axis, the size of the corns, their colour, are all different factors to differentiate the numerous varieties. Maize is together with wheat and rice one of the most important cereals. The crop of the corncobs is still sometimes done by hand but today more and more mechanically. The corncobs are dried in the sun without the leaves and then shelled. Maize may reach high yields from 1500 to 2000 KGs of corns per hectare in Europe, up to 5000 KGs in intensive culture in the USA. 100 KGs of corncobs without the leaves give an average of 55 to 75 KGs of corn seeds. Maize is a complete food : it contains 70 to 80% of starch, 7 to 8% of proteins and 1 to 2% of fatty matters; it is used to prepare a cornflour which is the basic food of a lot of different peoples around the world. The industries of starch, dextrin and breweries consume huge amounts of corn; after fermentation, corn may produce alcohol. Process Corn oil is extracted from the corn germs and its oil content depends widely of the degermination method. The germs represent approximately 12.5% of the corn seed total weight. Degermination can be done in two manners :
Oil extraction follows the next steps : preparation by cracking, preheating (optional), flaking, cooking, pre-pressing, cake cooling and followed by solvent extraction. Composition
End uses |
corn, once cleaned, is humidified to 20% of water before entering the degerminator where the germs are separated by sieving. Then the germs are dried until final moisture of 14%. They usually contain 18 to 20% oil and they can be solvent extracted directly after a simple prepa-ration consisting just in cooking and flaking.
Its main characteristics are :