Quality of wheat germ oil extracted by liquid and supercritical carbon dioxide

The extraction of wheat germ oil by liquid and supercritical CO₂ is described from the point of view of both operative method and pretreatment of raw material. The best conditions for wheat germ oil extraction are: pressure, 150 bar; temperature, 40°C; and solvent flow rate, 1.5 L/min at standard temperature and pressure. The yields and fatty acid compositions obtained are very similar to those resulting from the conventional extraction process using hexane as solvent (8.0 wt%), although a higher-quality oil is obtained by using CO₂ as solvent (free fatty acids, 12.4%; tocopherol content, 416.7 mg tocopherol/g wheat germ oil). These factors lead to the conclusion that the extraction process using CO₂ could be economically competitive with the conventional process, since it considerably simplifies the oil refinement stages and completely eliminates the solvent distillation stage, which are the most costly processing steps in terms of energy consumption.