A comparative study of solvent and supercritical CO 2 extraction of Simarouba gluaca seed oil

In the present study, the supercritical carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) extraction of oil from Simarouba gluaca seeds was carried out at varying conditions of pressure (300–500 bar), temperature (50–70 °C) and CO 2 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 CO 2 . 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 CO 2 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 CO 2 extraction over solvent extraction of Simarouba gluaca seed oil.