While flaxseed is one of the oldest oil crops used for food, information on the processing of its functional ingredients can vary. Moreover, many of the processing techniques developed for other oil crops are often not suitable for use on flaxseed.
How to extract oil from flaxseed?
Many techniques (conventional and novel) have been introduced for extracting oil from flaxseed. These include mechanical cold processing, solvent (polar and non-polar) extraction, supercritical fluid extraction, ultrasonic assisted extraction [69, 70] and microwave assisted extraction . 3.3.1. Cold Pressing
Does SFE extract oil from flaxseed?
SFE has been used to extract oils from flaxseed and shown to give higher extraction efficiencies and high quality oil products rich in omega-3-fatty acid and omega-6-fatty acids as compared with other extraction techniques such as screw press and solvent extraction [89, 90, 91].
Does flaxseed oil contain saturated fatty acids?
The oil extracted from flaxseed contains a very high proportion of both mono- and polyunsaturated fatty acids (~91%), and minor amounts of saturated fatty acids (~9%). The high levels of unsaturated fatty acids is partly the reason why flaxseeds are considered to be a major health promoting agent .