Study on the supercritical carbon dioxide extraction process combined with microwave pretreatment for efficiently extracting high quality camellia seed oil

The supercritical carbon dioxide extraction process combined with microwave pretreatment for efficiently extracting high quality camellia seed oil was investigated. Orthogonal test was used to determine the optimal conditions of microwave pretreatment. The optimum process parameters obtained were as follows:camellia seed flour with moisture content 7.8% and through a 100 mesh sieve was treated by microwave for 120 s. Then the supercritical carbon dioxide extraction process was optimized by response surface methodology. The optimum process parameters obtained were extracting for 2h at 33 MPa and 45℃. Under this optimum condition, the oil extraction efficiency was 92.76% and was far higher than that without microwave processing method. The extracted oil with a satisfying VEcontent of 182.4mg/kg could meet the requirement of the pressing first class camellia oil followed by simple deacidification process.