Characterization of wheat germ oil extracted by liquid and supercritical carbon dioxide.

Abstract

In this work the quality of wheat germ oil obtained by extraction with liquid and supercritical carbon dioxide was studied. At the optimum operating conditions, the yield of supercritical extraction is similar to the conventional extraction by organic solvent, but the quality of the wheat germ oil extracted by supercritical carbon dioxide is higher. Furthermore, supercritical extraction could be more economical than organic extraction because the solvent removal by distillation is not necessary and several steps of the following oil refining process can be simplified.

Keywords

• quality
• supercritical extraction
• unsaturated fatty acid
• wheat germ oil.