Systems and methods of refining any of crude vegetable oil, plant oils, fats, oils, greases, or soaps to meet edible oil specifications. The refining including mixing the crude oil feedstock with water and at least reactant, to form a mixture; feeding the mixture into a hydrothermal reactor and subjecting to heat, pressure, and turbulent flow conditions to cause rapid hydrolysis of phospholipids and reaction of the inorganic contaminants with the reactant to form inorganic salts; maintaining the temperature, pressure, and turbulent flow conditions of the mixture for a predetermined space time to prevent the organic portion of the mixture from undergoing a conversion reaction and to form a hydrothermal reactor effluent.

A method for increasing oil yield from a whole stillage byproduct produced in a corn dry-milling process for making alcohol (e.g., ethanol) and/or other biofuels/biochemicals and a system therefor is disclosed. In one embodiment, the method includes separating the whole stillage byproduct into an insoluble solids portion and a thin stillage portion. Thereafter, the thin stillage portion can be separated into a water-soluble solids portion, which includes oil, and a protein portion. Oil can be recovered from the water-soluble solids portion. In one example, to break oil in water emulsions in the water-soluble solids portion and increase the oil yield, a treated portion of the recovered oil, which may be heated, may be re-introduced/recycled to the water-soluble solids portion prior to the oil recovery.