Novel Eco-Friendly Techniques for Extraction of Food Based Lipophilic Compounds from Biological Materials

Abstract

Plant-based lipophilic compounds such as edible oils, phytochemicals, flavors, fragrances and colours are valuable products in the food, pharmaceutical and chemical industry. Extraction is one of the key processing steps in recovering and purifying lipophilic ingredients contained in plant-based materials. Lipophilic compounds are found in the cells of oil bearing plant seeds. Solvent extraction is the most common commercially used extraction method for low oil content materials. Solvent extraction has more extractability than existing commercial methods, but it also passes serious limitations and environmental issues. The Environmental Protection Agency has been much concerned regarding safety and environmental emissions associated with hexane usage in the solvent extraction process. Bio-solvents resulting from renewable raw materials and in particular from the biomass may become a solution of the existing problem. But the existing conventional extraction methods cannot respond to such solvent and hence need for new novel "Green" extraction technology having potential to overcome all limitations of existing technologies. This review will discuss the various possible novel eco-friendly extraction methods, their scientific concepts, principles, challenges, limitations and technological effort needed for successful implementation at the production scale.