Wheat germ oil extracted by supercritical carbon dioxide with ethanol: Fatty acid composition

In this work, supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) using CO 2 with ethanol as entrainer was performed at a temperature of 40 oC under a pressure of 21 MPa. For comparison, a similar extraction without the entrainer was carried out. The extraction yield of wheat germ using supercritical CO 2 with ethanol was slightly higher (10.7 wt%) than that of extraction without the entrainer (9.9 wt%). Fractions of SFE extracts were collected separately during the experiments and the composition of fatty acids in each fraction was analyzed. The SFE extracted oils were rich (63.4-71.3%) in the most valuable polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) and their content in all collected fractions was approximately constant. Similar PUFA contents were found in the reference samples of oils extracted by n-hexane (66.2-67.0%), while the commercial cold-pressed oil contained significantly less PUFA (60.2%). These results show a higher nutritional value of the oil obtained by extraction with supercritical CO 2 than cold pressed oil which is generally considered to be very valuable.