So I recently visited AKPARAVUNI, a remote village in Cross River State Nigeria and here farming is a very productive venture and a source of livlihood for the local indigenes, so accompanied my Brother to the oil mill factory were the palm fruits is processed to get the refined oil.
Palm oil refining is one of a lucrative business for the locals here one 25litres of refined palm oil can sale for $26.18,
So on this special day I and my brother went to the mill to mill his palmfruits, but that's after returning from the farm the previous week after harvesting of the palm fruits
Cause after harvesting you keep the bunches for about a week before trashing.. that's hitting the split bunch so the fruits can fall out and we then bag them and take them to the milling factory
When driven to the mill we had to keep them first before loading it into a big drum for cooking
Then we fill water and make the fire, it will probably cook for three to four hours, when it's done the next day us the milling proper.
By morning it's ready and so one of the mill workers stance to scoop the cooked fruits into the digester.
The cooked fruits poured into the digester, the digester is a mechanical machine that is linked by a diesel engine which causes it to rotate inside there by crushing the fruits, after about few minutes it's ready then someone stance at the opening to get it out
Then the digest fruits now is loaded onto a presser;this is what actually compress the fibre to squeeze out the palm oil usually operated by two People one at each end turning it till it's hard enough to squeeze out the palm oil
This process is repeated until the entire palm fruits are thoroughly milled,
Palm oil refining is a tidious work here since it's manually done with the help of some machines and equipment, it's oil is very resourceful here in Africa and other part of the world, it's beyond uses only for cooking but others such as cosmetics, soap production, margarine making, vegetable oil, etc visually everything essentially used in life is produce from the palm fruits, from the this refining you get the chat which is very useful for making fire, the kernel, seed of the palm fruits that can also be processed to get vegetable oil, Animal feeds the kernel bark can be used to make fire and the kernel can also be processed to get animal feeds.
So guys that's it thanks for reading through appreciate your time.