Vegetable oil extraction improvement

A process for the continuous prepressing of oleaginous vegetable material comprising the steps of:

• (1) subjecting an oleaginous vegetable material in a prepress to a mechanical prepressing, wherein said oleaginous vegetable material comprises oil, wherein said mechanical prepressing extracts at least 30% of the oil contained in the oleaginous vegetable material;
• (2) compressing said oleaginous vegetable material to produce a vegetable oil and a cake comprised of partially-deoiled oleaginous vegetable material, said cake exiting the prepress at a prepress discharge,
• (3) cooling said cake by subjecting the cake to a downward movement, and wherein said cake is cooled in a vertical cooler by a flow of a coolant gas rising counter-currently to the cake to yield a cooled cake, wherein the vertical cooler is placed directly under the prepress discharge, and wherein the vertical cooler provides a quenching or crisping of the cake, wherein the cake is directly cooled;
• and
• (4) subsequently transporting the cooled cake to a solvent extractor to extract residual oil from the cooled cake with a solvent, wherein the residual oil content (ROC) of the solvent extracted cooled cake is decreased by at least 0.1%.