Cotton seeds are the seeds of the cotton plant. Cotton seeds are ovoid, 3.5-10 mm long. They are densely covered with white or rusty, long and woolly hairs, called the lint, which is the main product used to make cotton textiles, and shorter hairs (linters).

Commercially available cotton seeds are usually the by-product of the production of cotton fibre by a cotton gin, which separates the lint from the seeds. Consequently, seed production is dominated by factors determining the production of cotton fiber and the seed is about 15-20% of the value of the cotton crop. Depending on the species and variety, cotton lint has different colours (black, brown or red), and may be long and thin (Gossypium hirsutum, 90% of world production), longer and finer (Gossypium barbadense, also called Egyptian cotton) or shorter and thicker (Gossypium herbaceum and Gossypium arboretum)

Fuzzy cotton seeds are subject to a mechanical delinting process that yields linters and naked seeds called delinted cottonseed or black or slick cottonseed . Cotton seeds intended for sowing generally undergo chemical (sulphuric acid) treatment in order to remove linters but these delinted seeds (sometimes called acid cottonseed) should not be used as feed as they may contain chemicals residues and can have an unpalatable flavour.

Fuzzy or delinted cotton seeds may be either fed to livestock or submitted to oil extraction, yielding oil, cottonseed meal and hulls. Cotton seeds contain about 20% of valuable cooking oil. A typical cottonseed crushing operation separates the seed into oil (16%), hulls (26%), meal (45.5%) and linters (8.5%).

Processes

Cotton seeds can be stored for one year under favourable conditions. The seeds should be dried and their moisture levels kept under 10%. Their high hygroscopic nature requires that the relative air humidity in the storage installation is monitored. An air-cooling system is necessary to prevent seed heating during storage. Overheated seeds must be cooled down to 15.6°C to prevent further deterioration.

KR Solvents works

KR Solvents processed Cottonseed oil is extracted from the seeds of cotton plants of various species, mainly Gossypium hirsutum and Gossypium herbaceum. They are grown primarily to produce for cotton fiber and animal feed. Processing includes the use of hydraulic pressing, screw pressing, and solvent extraction.

Solvent Products

• Oil
• DOC
• HULLS
• LINT

Cottonseed is crushed in the mill after removing lint from the cotton boll. The seed is further crushed to remove any remaining linters or strands of minute cotton fibers. The seeds are further hulled and polished to release the soft and high-protein meat.

Refining: In the crude oil contains residue and solid powder, so we have to remove them before packing or refining. The residue & solid powder is separated through automatic oil-dreg separator. After separating, we can get two products, one is crude oil with impurity of 1% which will be refined or filtered further by Filtered Press; the other is residue with oil which is conveyed back into Screw Press to repress to get rest oil.

Cooking: The process is to add the steam into the crushed/flaked seeds pcs, then to dry the seeds for getting rid off more water content. In this process, changing the protein of seeds with the water and temperature to make the oil molecule loose for pressing easily to get crude oil also get the better cake and oil. We adopt vertical stack cooker with five layers to cook flakes.

Expelling: Matching the modern style oil expelling press machines to get more oil, or you can use solvent after pre-pressing by oil expellers to get more oil. Solvent extraction is the commonly used commercial technique to recover oil from oilseeds.