A promising method for recovery of oil and potent antioxidant extracts from Pistacia khinjuk Stocks seeds

Abstract

Increasing demand of chemical raw materials in the areas of energy production, nutrition, health etc. has led the researchers to find out new biomass sources and more efficient extraction strategies. In this study, one of these biomass sources, ground Pistacia khinjuk Stocks seed, was subjected to Soxhlet, static pressurized hot solvent and supercritical fluid extractions using n-hexane, acetone and methanol.Static supercritical acetone extraction conducted at 290°C exhibited the highest oil yield, with a value of 47.66±0.06%. Although static pressurized hot n-hexane extraction conducted at 120°C resulted in a 42.31±0.55% oil yield, the oil quality was better due to the lower processing temperature. Pressurized hot methanol and traditional extractions were found to be ineffective. Hence, static pressurized hot n-hexane extraction was proposed as an alternative to previous techniques.P. khinjuk oil consists mainly of 56.6% oleic acid and, in total, 83.9% unsaturated fatty acids, which makes it an important nutritional additive.Total phenolic contents of the delipidated methanolic extracts ranged between 0.15±0.05 and 2.24±0.23g gallic acid equivalent per 100g air dried sample. All extracts, except for supercritical methanol, exhibited antioxidant activity at moderate levels when compared to BHT and Trolox.