A comparative study of solvent and supercritical CO2 extraction of Simarouba gluaca seed oil

Abstract

In the present study, the supercritical carbon dioxide (CO2) extraction of oil from Simarouba gluaca seeds was carried out at varying conditions of pressure (300–500 bar), temperature (50–70 °C) and CO2 flow rate (10–30 g·min-1). The extraction condition for maximum oil yield was obtained at 500 bar pressure, 70 °C and at 30 g·min-1 flow rate of CO2. The extracted oil was analyzed thoroughly for physico-chemical properties and compared with those of conventional solvent extracted oil. An interesting observation is a significant reduction in the phosphorus content of the oil (8.4 mg·kg-1) extracted using supercritical CO2 compared to the phosphorous content of the solvent extracted oil (97 mg·kg-1). Moreover, the content of total tocopherols in supercritically extracted oil (135.6 mg·kg-1) was found to be higher than the solvent extracted oil (111 mg·kg-1). The rest of the physico-chemical properties of the two differently extracted oils matched well with each other. The results indicated the possible benefits of supercritical CO2 extraction over solvent extraction of Simarouba gluaca seed oil.