India is one of the best producers of castor seed. Castor seed oil content, it may vary from 35-40%. Production of castor oil by extraction process is economic one. Process of extraction may be batch type or continuous. Oil Extraction process carried over the following stages to get pure castor oil; they are Extraction process, Distillation process, Separation of excess wax available in the oil. Packing material required for distribution of oil will be plastic drum or barrel or plastic containers or metal container. It can be easily transportable and handable. There is very good market demand of castor oil in the indigenous market. There is also very good export market of the product. There are more than 100 derivatives produced from castor oil in the Germany. As a whole castor oil project is one of the good project in India which has good prospect. Castor seed is grown commercially on plantations but also harvested from wild plants. The seed must be hulled after harvesting. The seeds contain about 50 percent oil by weight. To extract the oil they must be crushed and pressed with hydraulic or continuous screw pressing at high or low temperature. Further solvent extraction can release much of the remaining oil. Modification of the oil is achieved by a variety of chemical processes including oxidation, hydrogenation and thermal treatments to produce products for specific applications. Castor Oil Extraction The ripe seeds are allowed to dry, when they split open and discharge the seeds. These seeds are cleaned, cooked and dried prior to extraction. Oil is then extracted by pre-pressing, using a high pressure continuous screw press – called the expeller. Extracted oil is filtered. Material finally discharged from the press, called cake, contains 8 to 10 percent oil. It is crushed into a coarse meal, and subjected to solvent extraction with hexane or heptane. Oil Purification Once the oil has been extracted from the seed, it is necessary to remove impurities from the oil. The oil is essentially a pure triglyceride, and contains almost 90% of glyceryl tricinoleate. It is the ricinoleic triglyceride that is needed in order to produce high quality castor oil. The crude oil is then refined by Settling and Degumming of the oil, Bleaching, Neutralization and Steam Stripping. Uses & Application • It has medicinal value; it is used in the different variety of medicinal product. • 2. It can be commercially used as antifoaming agent. • 3. It has largely used in the cosmetics industry for the production of hair oil. • 4. It can be commercially used for the production of different grade of plastic additives. Market Survey Indian edible oil industry is composed of some 15,000 oil mills, 600 solvent extraction units, 250 vanaspati units and over 600 refining units. These employ over a million people. With around 8% of world oilseeds production, over 7% of global protein meal production, around 4% of world oil meal export, total oilseeds production of 23 mn tonne and 5.6 mn tonne of edible oil production, India is the fourth largest edible oil economy in the world valued at USD 16.5 bn (Rs 660 bn). India has a share of nearly 6% of global vegetable oil production, nearly 11% of global vegetable oil imports and 9% of global edible oil consumption. And yet over 40% of the edible oil availability in the market is sourced from imports. In a large measure the dwindling state of the oilseeds production is attributable to the low crop yields, which have fluctuated drastically. In the recent years, the production of oilseeds got stumbled to a very low of 691 kg/ha and recorded the average yield of 935 Kg/ha over next three years. This has adversely affected the availability of edible oils in the country. The country has depended largely on imports to meet the domestic demand pegged at around 12 mn tonne now. According to the data compiled by the Solvent Extractors' Association (SEA).estimates of the country's vegetable oil imports are 8 mn tonne against 7.5 mn tonne predicted earlier for the year. Apart from lower domestic production, increase in domestic consumption due to reduced domestic prices and zero import duty on crude edible oil were responsible for increased import. The production of oils from the solvent extraction sector has increased steadily to the level of 1.4 mn tonne. Of the 1.4 mn tonne, 14% or about 195,000 tonne of output represents industrial oils. These, along with the production from nine oilseeds, are expected to augment the domestic production to around 8 mn tonne. The edible oil segment is currently undergoing a metamorphosis as a result of spiraling prices of soft oils - sunflower and soyabean. The edible oil industry is quite unique as its demand exhibits near price inelasticity. While oils have witnessed sharp rise of 30 to 40% in the price of imported edible oil, the imports too have increased by 40%. Edible oil imports were 1.5 mn tonne as compared to 1.1 mn tonne in the corresponding period in the next year. The edible oil imports in the country are likely to surge from the existing 6 mn tonne to 8.3 mn tonne in 2015. This corresponds to the existing demand for edible oils of around 12 mn tonne expected to increase by 77% to 21.3 mn tonne by 2015. It is claimed that a marginal 23% increase by 2015 in acreage under oilseeds could contribute substantially to the total output, thereby reducing the dependence on imports. The introduction of innovative and modern technology could help increase the yield of oilseeds in the country to 1.4 tonne by 2015 from the current level of 0.9 tonne a hectare currently. Accordingly, the total oilseed production has to increase substantially to 44.8 mn tonne, by 2015 from the present level of around 23 mn tonne. This would result in higher availability of oil seeds for the mills to crush, augmenting total edible oil production to nearly 13.5 tonne by 2015. Few Major Players are named as under: Amrit Agro Inds. Ltd. Balaji Agro Inds. Ltd. Bhagat International Pvt. Ltd. Biotor Industries Ltd. Dolat Investments Ltd. Growmore Solvent Ltd. [Merged] Gufic Biosciences Ltd. Gujarat Ambuja Proteins Ltd. [Merged] Gujarat Speciality Lubes Ltd. Ihsedu Agrochem Pvt. Ltd. Ihsedu Itoh Green Chemicals Mktg. Pvt. Ltd. India Castor Ltd. Jamnadas Madhavji Intl. Ltd. Jayant Agro-Organics Ltd. Kalyani Refineries Ltd. N K Industries Ltd. Nu Tech Organic Chemicals Ltd. State Trading Corpn. Of India Ltd. Sunrise Oleochemicals Ltd. Trisuns Chemical Industry Ltd.