Vegetable oil is a nontoxic, inexpensive, and effective solvent. Furthermore, any oil remaining in soil after extraction has the potential to enhance the fertility. A biomass slurry containing microbial material in an aqueous suspension is collected. The slurry is can be centrifuged and then in a pass on to a homogenizer. The resulting slurry is fed into a contacting device, such as a packed column, and mixed with a solvent that is essentially immiscible in water, for example hexane. The solvent extracts the oil from the biomass slurry and then separates from the slurry. Edible oil is recovered from the solvent and further processed.To remove oils from the microbial biomass, the biomass must first be dried, e.g., by spray drying, then slurried in the solvent. Biomass is produced in a relatively dilute aqueous slurry (fermentation culture), which means drying is an expensive process. Additionally, the temperature profile during drying must be such that oil quality is not compromised.
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