Input your daily raw material volume and oil type. Our calculator instantly recommends the right press configuration, tells you expected oil output, floor space needed, and power requirements — so you can plan your investment accurately.
Adjust the inputs below — results update in real time
Typical screw press oil yields by raw material type — used in calculator above
| Raw Material | Oil Content | Screw Press Yield | Press Model | Typical Capacity Range |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 🥜 Peanut | 42–52% | 6YL-160 | 5–100 TPD | |
| 🌱 Soybean | 17–22% | 6YL-180 | 5–200 TPD | |
| 🌾 Sesame | 45–55% | 6YL-130 | 1–50 TPD | |
| 🌻 Sunflower | 38–50% | 6YL-160 | 5–150 TPD | |
| 🌼 Rapeseed | 35–45% | 6YL-180 | 5–200 TPD | |
| 🌿 Cottonseed | 15–20% | 6YL-180 | 10–300 TPD | |
| 🌴 Palm Kernel | 46–52% | 6YL-160 | 5–100 TPD | |
| 🥥 Coconut | 60–65% | 6YL-130 | 1–50 TPD | |
| 🌱 Mustard | 28–36% | 6YL-130 | 2–50 TPD |
The logic behind the recommendations — so you understand what you're seeing
Press model selection is based on raw material density, fibre content, and oil viscosity — not just volume. A sesame press has a fundamentally different barrel profile than a soybean press, and matching these properties is critical for yield.
Floor space estimates include the press footprint plus minimum safety clearance (600mm on all sides), feed system, oil collection tank, and filter press. The refinery add-on assumes a batch-cycle DBDW system positioned adjacent to the pressing area.
Power figures include presses, conveying, and filtration. The base press kW is multiplied by 1.35 to account for conveying, oil pump, and auxiliary loads. Refinery power adds 15–30 kW depending on batch size and heating configuration.
Common questions about the capacity calculator and plant sizing
Our engineers will validate these numbers with your exact materials and floor plan, then deliver a complete plant layout within 24 hours.
Planning an edible oil mill is fundamentally a sizing problem. You start from how much raw seed you want to process each day, then work backwards to the equipment that can actually move that volume — the press throughput, the operating hours per shift, the expected oil yield, and (if you refine on site) the refinery batch size. Get any one of these wrong and the whole plant falls out of balance.
This tool turns four simple inputs — your raw material type, daily volume (kg/day), operating hours (8, 16 or 24 h) and whether you need crude or fully refined oil — into a planning-stage picture: required plant capacity in tonnes per day (TPD), an indicative daily oil output, a recommended press configuration, an estimated floor space, and a power requirement. It is the same back-of-envelope logic an engineer uses on a first call, made transparent.
Why it matters commercially: an over-sized plant ties up capital in presses and refinery vessels that sit idle, inflates floor-space rent and connected power, and lengthens payback. An under-sized plant forces overtime shifts, accelerates wear, and caps the revenue you can earn from the seed you can source. Capacity is the single decision that anchors your equipment budget, building footprint and staffing plan — so it pays to model it before you commit. Treat the numbers here as a starting frame, then confirm them against a detailed design once your real seed quality and site constraints are known.
Inputs (indicative): soybean at a typical ~18% oil content, processing 10 tonnes/day, screw pressing only (crude oil).
Screw pressing does not recover all the oil — a realistic single-press extraction is around 80–90% of the oil present (the rest stays in the cake). At ~90% extraction:
10 t seed × 18% oil = 1.8 t of oil present; × 90% recovered ≈ 1.62 t/day of crude oil (~1,620 kg/day), with roughly 8.3–8.4 t of press cake as a by-product.
Indicative only. Actual yield moves with seed moisture, freshness and whether you single- or double-press. This illustrates the core chain the calculator follows: seed in → oil content → extraction efficiency → oil out.
Capacity is throughput, and throughput is rate × hours. Suppose you must process 20 tonnes/day of soybean.
Over a 20-hour running window you need presses delivering ~20 ÷ 20 = 1.0 t/h. Stretch the same 20 t over 24 hours of continuous operation and the required rate drops to ~20 ÷ 24 ≈ 0.83 t/h — meaning a smaller or fewer press lines can carry the same daily tonnage.
The trade-off is real: longer hours mean continuous-duty equipment, more shifts and crew, but lower peak rate and capital. Shorter hours need a bigger press but simpler staffing. The operating-hours input in the calculator exists precisely so you can see this lever. Figures indicative.
Two plants of identical seed throughput can produce very different oil volumes because oil content varies hugely by seed.
Process 10 t/day of each, at ~90% extraction (indicative):
Same seed tonnage, more than double the oil from sunflower — which is why low-oil seeds like soybean and cottonseed are often run at large scale or via solvent extraction, while high-oil seeds press economically at modest size. Always model capacity around your seed, not a generic figure. Indicative values for illustration.
| Oilseed | Typical oil content (indicative) | Planning note |
|---|---|---|
| Soybean | ~17–22% | Low oil content; pressed at scale or via solvent extraction for high volumes |
| Sunflower | ~38–45% | High oil; presses economically, popular for mid-size mills |
| Rapeseed / Canola | ~38–44% | High oil; widely grown, common feedstock for food and biodiesel |
| Groundnut / Peanut | ~42–50% | High oil; valued for premium edible oil, good press yield |
| Cottonseed | ~15–20% | Low oil; usually large-scale, by-product of cotton ginning |
| Palm Kernel | ~45–50% | High oil; the kernel only — distinct from palm fruit pulp oil |
| Sesame | ~45–55% | Very high oil; small premium runs, often cold/low-temperature pressed |
All ranges are indicative industry common-knowledge figures for planning estimates, not a guarantee of yield. Recoverable oil is always lower than oil content because pressing and extraction leave residual oil in the cake/meal. Verify with lab analysis of your actual raw material.
Capacity sizing is the first step for anyone planning, expanding or quoting an oilseed processing operation. It is used across edible and vegetable oil milling, where seed throughput drives the press line; agribusiness and farmer cooperatives turning their own harvest into oil and cake; food processing groups adding in-house oil supply; biodiesel and oleochemical projects sizing feedstock crushing capacity; and contract or toll processors that must match equipment to fluctuating client volumes. Typical roles reaching for these numbers include plant owners and investors weighing capital, project and process engineers laying out the line, procurement teams scoping equipment, and agronomists or sourcing managers checking that local seed supply matches the plant they intend to build.
This calculator is a transparent planning aid, not a performance guarantee. Every figure is built from the visible logic on this page — seed throughput, indicative oil content, an assumed extraction efficiency, operating hours and standard equipment footprints — using widely-published typical industry values rather than data from any specific plant. We have deliberately kept the method open so you can see exactly how an input becomes an output, and adjust your own assumptions. Real-world results depend on factors no calculator can know in advance, so use the numbers to frame your project and budget, then confirm them with a detailed plant design.
Multiply your daily seed tonnage by the seed's oil content, then by the extraction efficiency. For example, 10 t/day of sunflower at ~40% oil content and ~90% extraction gives about 10 × 0.40 × 0.90 ≈ 3.6 t/day of crude oil (indicative). The remainder leaves as press cake. Use typical oil-content figures for a first estimate, then confirm with a lab test of your actual seed.
Oil content is the total oil in the seed; recovered yield is what the process actually extracts. Mechanical pressing always leaves some residual oil in the cake, so a seed with 40% oil content might yield closer to 36% recovered oil by single-pressing. Moisture, seed freshness, press wear, temperature and single- vs double-pressing all affect the gap. These are planning-stage estimates — your real figure should be confirmed by a detailed design.
Often yes. Many oilseeds arrive in a harvest window, so you may need to process a year's seed in fewer months, or store seed and run steadily. A common approach is to size the press line for your realistic peak daily throughput, use operating hours as a flexible buffer, and leave layout space for a second line if you expect to grow. Model the high-throughput case in the calculator, then confirm storage and supply assumptions with an engineer before committing capital.
