Rapid method to obtain virgin olive oil for acidity determination.

Abstract

A rapid and simple method to obtain, from olive samples, enough quantity of oil to determine acidity grade is proposed. From paste samples of milled olives, different fraction are separated to be centrifugated during 5 minutes at 4500 r.p.m. Oil acidity results obtained from sodium sulfate anhidrous and natural microtalc added samples are compared with blank samples, and with those obtained by the Abencor extraction procedure. The correlation between the acidity of oil samples obtained by the Abencor method is also analyzed against other samples obtained by the normalized method in Spain, norm UNE 55070, Soxhlet system. Results show that in all the centrifugated samples enough amount of oil is obtained to determin the acidity grade, it also show that treatment with sodium sulfate anhidrous obtains a bigger recovery percentage, and that in all 3 cases, the acidity shows a good correlation with that of the Abencor system, doubling the number of samples analysed by the Abencor system. It also shows that the acidity grade obtained by using the UNE 55070 norm is aproximately 0,3 grades above that obtained by the Abencor system.

Keywords

• acidity
• analysis
• centrifugation
• quality
• virgin olive oil.