Determination of Optimum Conditions for the Extraction of Squalene from Olive Pomace with Supercritical CO2

S. Stavroulias and C. Panayiotou

Abstract
Olive pomace is a standard by-product of olive oil production containing valuable compounds recoverable by supercritical fluid extraction (SFE). The solvent/solubility characteristics of a supercritical fluid may be fine tuned by changing the external pressure-temperature conditions of the extraction. This allows for the selective extraction of certain compounds. The present study describes a series of experiments, the methodology, instrumentation, and results of supercritical extraction of olive pomace with CO2. The effects that primarily affect supercritical extraction, temperature, pressure and flow rate, have been investigated and monitored on, both, the concentration of squalene at the extract and the overall recovery of squalene from pomace. The Box-Behnken approach was used for designing the experiments. The effects are easily visualized in the resulting 3D plots, which were used for identifying the optimum extraction conditions..

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Keywords
Supercritical fluid extraction, Carbon dioxide, olive pomace, Box-Behnken, Design of Experiments