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ARS Home » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #83545

Title: SUPERCRITICAL FLUID EXTRACTION, NEW AOCS OFFICIAL METHOD FOR MEASURING OILCONTENT

Author
item KING, JERRY
item O'FARRELL, WALTER - ISCO INC LINCOLN NEBRASKA

Submitted to: Inform
Publication Type: Trade Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 10/1/1997
Publication Date: N/A
Citation: N/A

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: Traditional methods for determining the oil content of vegetable oilseeds, advocated by the American Oil Chemists' Society (AOCS), have required the use of organic solvents for the extraction of the seed oil moiety. Recently, a new method has been approved using supercritical fluid extraction (SFE), incorporating supercritical carbon dioxide (SC-CO2) as the extracting agent. The method has been tested successfully on five different types of oilseeds: soybean, cottonseed, canola, sunflower and safflower, using gravimetry to determine the weight percent oil in these seed types. Both neat SC-CO2 and SC-CO2 containing 15% of ethanol by volume were incorporated to allow polar constituents such as phospholipids to be coextracted. Additional SC-CO2 based methods, such as the AOCS neutral oil loss and total fatty acids in soapstock, are also discussed; and the new Nutritional Labeling & Education Act (NLEA) fatty acid-based analysis method is shown to be compatible with SFE methodology.