This was also why Joseph had originally had the Engineering Design Institute give Schramm its full support.
In the past, the traditional method of pressing oil had been to heat raw materials such as rapeseed and flaxseed first, causing the cell walls to rupture, then use a Waterwheel to drive a screw rod that squeezed the materials and pressed the Oils out.
Because a Waterwheel's power was limited, and the machinery itself was rather crude, the materials had to be pressed multiple times, and a certain amount of water had to be added to soak them open before most of the Oils in the raw materials could be extracted.
And the number one culprit behind Oils going bad was oxidation.
The traditional pressing process was extremely slow, which meant the raw materials had to be exposed to the air for a long time. In other words, the oil had basically lost more than half its lifespan the moment it was pressed out.
In addition, traditional pressing methods required the raw materials to be squeezed repeatedly, causing a great deal of debris to mix into the oil. These scraps contained large amounts of protein and were extremely prone to rotting.
As a result, oil pressed by traditional methods was very difficult to store for more than a month. The vast majority of people bought it from oil mills only when they needed to use it.
And oil mills could only be built beside rivers, while each batch could not be too large; otherwise, if it failed to sell, the freshly pressed oil would spoil. As for Merchants, they were even less willing to transport and sell edible oil.
This had caused the price of edible oil to remain stubbornly high. Even residents of a great city like Paris could only eat