Pressurized fluid extraction of pistachio oil using a modified supercritical fluid extractor and factorial design for optimization

A pressurized fluid extraction (PFE) method for the extraction of pistachio oil was developed mainly as an analytical tool to determine oil content and/or its quality. The supercritical fluid extractor was modified to be able to pump liquid solvent and CO2 into the extraction vessel alternatively. The extraction yield was found independent of the pressure in the range 10–150 bar tested. The addition of crushed glass increased the extraction yield by more than 15 g/100 g, while the extraction reproducibility expressed by percentage RSD was improved from 4 to 1. Furthermore, the use of crushed glass reduced the solvent consumption from 35 to 20 mL. The effective variables of temperature (40–80 °C), solvent volume (5–25 mL), and crushed glass percentage (30–60 g/100 g) were optimized by a factorial design method. The model allows the prediction of the extraction yield at different conditions. The PFE yield (i.e. 52.6 g/100 g) and fatty acid composition of pistachio oil were found similar to Soxhlet extraction and their variations were within the experimental uncertainty verified by statistical t-test analysis. Two different solvents of n-hexane and ethanol were used for PFE of pistachio oil. The extraction yield was about one-third (i.e. 18 g/100 g) when ethanol was used as solvent.