A study of thermal pyrolysis for castor meal using the Taguchi method

Castor beans are one of the world's top ten oil crops, with approximately 50% castor oil and 50% castor meal being obtained after a two-stage pressing process (cold and hot pressing). Nevertheless, castor meal still contains a significant amount of residual oil, due to the mechanical limitations of current pressing technology, and this can be further extracted from by means of thermal pyrolysis. In the study, the Taguchi method is performed to optimize the thermal pyrolysis of castor meal in order to maximize the yield of pyrolytic oil.