If you are buying a solid oil like organic coconut or organic palm oil and you’re getting it in a 55 gallon drum, you may encounter a predicament when you begin your production: how do you get this solid oil (often the consistency of butter) out of it’s packaging?
Unless you are buying smaller pails with a lid that you can pull off completely, “scooping” the oil out isn’t always an option. Many drums that have a solid oil inside require that you heat the oil first to melt it and turn it into a liquid to get it out.
What’s the best way to heat it? There are many different options, and I met with our production manager, Kevin Smith, who made a number of good suggestions. Here is what he recommends for those of you trying to melt your solid oil for the first time.
Remember that different coconut oils melt at different temperatures, so you’ll have to make sure that you know the melting point of the oil that you have. As a starting point, most RBD coconut oils melt at 76˚F, so you’ll just need to get the oil warmer than that to transform it into its liquid state.
One of the simplest ways to heat the drum is to allow it to sit in a small enclosed room that is warmer that 76˚F. It typically takes about 12-24 hours to fully melt a 55 gallon drum, but of course that depends on the size of the room and the power of your heater. Just place the single drum in the room and put a space heater nearby (but make sure that it’s not too close for safety reasons).
If your packaging is small enough (or you have a creative set-up in your space) you can put your coconut oil in a hot water bath. This is a fast and cheap way to safely heat your oil. Just get a large container of hot water and plunk the oil in. You can imagine though, if you are dealing with 55 gallon drum sizes, this option might be out unless you have a unique “bath area” in your production facility.
If you live in a warm area, sometimes just putting your drum outside throughout the warmth of the day will do the trick. Of course, it depends on where you live and the time of year. But this is a spectacularly easy and cheap option if it works for you.
If you use a large volume of this oil, some larger packaging sizes have built in heaters. 275 Gallon Totes can have heaters built into the bottom to allow you to simply plug in the packaging to melt it. Even larger, you can have 6,000 gallon tanker trucks delivered that have heaters built into them, allowing you to pump into your heated storage tank directly from a tanker truck.