U.S.

Soybean Meal Extraction, Processing and Specifications

KEITH C. BEHNKE, Professor of Feed Science
KANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY
Modern soybean processing involves solvent extraction to obtain crude oil and defatted meal. Nearly all
defatted meal is used for animal feed with only a small fraction further processed for industrial and human
consumption.
The first portion of this paper is devoted to the process of oil extraction and heat processing to produce
soybean meal while the last section is devoted to specifications and physical and nutritional properties. It
should be realized that there are differences in the resulting soybean meal due to the process used,
geographic location, agronomic practices and many other factors. To make an informed purchase
decision, one needs an appreciation of all factors that can influence quality.
Modern soybean extraction plants are typically quite large, crushing from a thousand to as much as three
thousand tons of soybeans per day. At these volumes, it is no surprise that occasional problems might
arise that will show up later in soya product quality and in animal performance.
I. Soybean Meal- Definitions and Specifications.
The official definition of soybean meal that is generally used in the U.S. comes from the Association of
American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO). AAFCO has been given the responsibility of generating
official descriptions and legal definitions for all common feed ingredients for the purpose of
communication between the seller and the buyer. As a rule, the definition/description for an ingredient
includes something about the process that results in the ingredient, limits on inclusion of non-nutritive
additives and limits on the level of low value components. For example, the following is the AAFCO
definition of the most common forms of soybean meal used in the world:
84.7 Soybean Meal, Dehulled, Solvent Extracted is obtained by grinding the flakes remaining after
removal of most of the oil from dehulled soybeans by a solvent extraction process. It must contain not
more than 3.5% crude fiber. It may contain calcium carbonate or an anti-caking agent not to exceed
o.5% as defined in section 87 (Special Purpose Products) to reduce caking and improve flowability. The
name of the conditioning agent must be shown as an added ingredient. When listed as an ingredient in a
manufactured feed, it may be identified as "Dehulled Soybean Meal". The words "Solvent Extracted" are
not required when listing as an ingredient in a manufactured feed.
IFN 5-04-612 Soybean seeds without hulls, meal, solvent extracted.
84.61 Soybean Meal, Solvent Extracted is the product obtained by grinding the flakes remaining after
removal of most of the oil from soybeans by solvent extraction process. It must contain not more than
7.05% crude fiber. In may contain calcium carbonate or an anti-caking agent not to exceed 0.5% as
defined in section 87 (Special Purpose Products) to reduce caking and improve flowability. The name of

the conditioning agent must be shown as an added ingredient. The words "Solvent Extracted" are not
required when listing as an ingredient in a manufactured feed.
IFN 5-04-604 Soybean seeds meal, solvent extracted.
Note: Above definitions are from The Official Publication of the Association of American Feed Control
Officials. 1997
It should be noted that the lever of commonly important nutrients is not included in the official definition.
This is because the nutrients tend to vary by region, by particular process and by year. If a specific
nutrient (e.g. protein) or other physical property is required by the buyer, it can and should be specified
in the contract. The contract should also specify penalties that will be accessed if contract specifications
are not met and procedures to be followed in case of a dispute over some aspect of the delivered
commodity. If the contract simply calls for "soybean meal", the vendor has a great latitude regarding
what is shipped.
II. Soybean Extraction Process.
The diagram shown in Figure I shows the various steps that are involved in soybean meal production.
The diagram should be use in conjunction with the following comments to understand the extraction and
heat treatment processing that soybean meal goes through and where errors can be made that will affect
the final value and use of the meal.
A. Storage of soybeans.
At harvest, soybeans are typically stored locally at an elevator or on the farm. If needed, the beans are
artificially dried to a safe storage moisture.
Following harvest, the beans are shipped via truck or rail to a processing plant where they are tested for
physical properties and graded. Depending upon variability in protein, oil, seed size and so forth, most
plants will segregate the beans based on physical and chemical properties to improve plant operations.
After storage and cleaning, the beans are conditioned through a fairly gentle heating process to loosen
the seed coat from the cotyledons.
B. Cracking and Dehulling.
The first step in the extraction process is to crack the beans and remove the hulls. Ideally, the cracking
rolls are set to break each bean in 6 to 8 pieces and remove the hull from the endosperm. The hulls are
then usually removed using aspiration to separate the hulls from the endosperm pieces.
C. Conditioning and Flaking.
The endosperm pieces are first conditioned with dry heat to about 160F (65C). This softens the
pieces so that they can be flaked without creating excessive fines.
Following conditioning, the bean pieces are flaked to about 0.015 in.(0.38 mm). Flaking serves two
purposes. It creates a huge increase in surface area that serves to enhance the solvent extraction process

by improving the leach rate from the interior of the flake. Secondly and most importantly, flaking ruptures
the oil cells in each piece, freeing the oil to improve extraction.
D. Solvent Extraction.
There are several extractor designs in use today, however, they all share a basic concept in terms of how
the flakes and solvent move through the extractor. That concept is counter-current flow of the solvent
relative to the flow of flakes and all extractors in the U.S. use hexane and the solvent of choice. Under
this concept, fresh hexane is introduced at the end of the extraction process and, after percolating
through the flakes, is pumped toward the beginning of the process, gaining in oil content at each point
along the way. The process is nearly identical to the process of making coffee where objective is to
extract the color and chemicals (e.g. caffeine) from the coffee grounds.
In the case of soya extraction, the objective is to extract all soluble materials and, in particular, the soya
oil. Regardless of the design of the extractor, the flakes are extracted sufficiently to reduce the oil content
from about 18-19% in the raw bean to about 0.5%.
Following solvent extraction, the oil rich solvent, called "miscella", is heated to distill and recover the
solvent. The resulting crude oil is typically refined into cooking oil and other food products. Depending
upon the location of the oil refinery relative to the extraction plant, some of the by-products of the
refining process may be introduced to the soybean meal. This practice can result in some variation in the
quality and physical properties of the final meal product.
E. Solvent Removal and Toasting.
After the solvent-rich, defatted flakes leave the extractor, they are transferred to a device called the
"deodorizer-toaster", the "DT" for short. In the deodorizer portion of the DT, the flakes are subjected to
dry heat initially to remove as much hexane as possible, and then steam in introduced to strip out the final
residues of the solvent. The steam heating process is also used to begin the process of denaturing the
anti-nutritional factors found in soybeans. These will be discussed in some detail later in the paper.
Following desolventizing, the flakes are introduced to the toasting operation. In some facilities, the
toasting process is part of the same device as the desolventizer while, in others, it is a separate machine.
In all cases, however, the desolventized flakes are subjected to high temperature air, which results in the
flakes being toasted. There are two purposes for this process- the primary purpose is to denature the
remaining anti-nutritional factors remaining in the flakes. The second is to remove the bitter, beany
flavors commonly associate with legumes. The resulting flakes have a light tan to brown color and a
roasted, nutty flavor.
F. Grinding and Sizing.
The final operation is grinding. The flakes coming out of the system are often agglomerated into large
pieces and grinding and sizing is necessary to improve flow and handling characteristics. This operation is
typically done using a standard hammermill with a fairly large screen hole size.
Following grinding, the soya meal is conveyed to storage and is ready for shipment to the consumer or
the export facility. In some cases, the hulls are toasted and ground and a portion of the hulls are added
to the meal to result in 44% protein meal that is often used in ruminant diets. Toasted, ground hulls are
also sold to feed mills for use in dairy, beef and sheep diets.

III. Factors Affecting Soybean Meal Quality.

There are many factors that can affect soybean meal quality. These include quality of the initial source of
beans, each step in the extraction process and the storage of the meal following extraction. In most
cases, processors go to great lengths to obtain as high of quality of beans as is possible in a given year.
Each process is controlled so that the process is optimized to result in the highest quality and yield of
products possible.
A. Soybean Quality.
It is known that bean quality will vary from year to year and growing region to growing region. There is
very little that can be done to eliminate variation so processors have learned how to reduce the effect of
variation on the oil and meal products that they produce. Typically, processors are good enough that
they can produce consistent quality meal even though there is substantial variation from year to year. In
most cases, users do not even know that variation exists.
B. Steps in the Extraction Process that Affect Meal Quality and Oil Extraction.
1.Flaking- If the flaking process is not done properly, the yield of oil will be low and the oil content in the
resulting meal will be higher than normal. This can result in the oil going rancid and having a negative
affect on the flavor and acceptability of the meal for feed purposes. In no case should the oil content of
soya meal be greater than 1% otherwise, problems will result if the meal is stored for an extended period
of time.
2. Extraction- Like flaking, if the extraction process is incomplete, the residual oil content will be high
and there is risk of rancidity. As a rule the extractors are operated at a rate that ensures that the oil
removal is adequate.
3. Desolventizing- There is little risk of having excessive solvent left in the soybean meal as the cost and
safety considerations are such that few processors fail in recovering as much a possible. In addition, one
reason hexane is the solvent of choice is that it has a low toxicity for most farm animals and a small
amount of residual hexane posses little risk.
4. Toasting- This should be a major area of concern for users of soya meal. If the meal is over-toasted,
there is great risk that certain amino acids, particularly lysine, will have significantly reduced availability to
the animal. This is due to the fact that lysine and some of the other amino acids can be chemically bound
to certain carbohydrates and this complex become totally unavailable to digestion. The result is that the
animal will demonstrate a lysine deficiency even though it appears that the formula is adequate in the
amino acid.
On the other hand, if the meal is undertoasted, there will be excessive amounts of antinutritional factors
such as trypsin inhibitor and urease present that will reduce the digestibility of the meal and can also
result in amino acid deficiencies in the animal.

There are several tests that should be used by the buyer to ensure that the level of toasting is appropriate
for the intended use of the product. Many of these are rapid and accurate enough so that they can be
done before the shipment is received. If the meal is found to be of inferior quality using the rapid tests, it
can then be isolated, sampled and tested using a more sophisticated test to determine quality.
5. Other Testing- In order to best utilize any shipment of soybean meal, each lot received should be
tested for protein and moisture content. With that information, the nutritional value and storage life of the
shipment can be estimated with some degree of accuracy.