Abstract
Supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) was used as a primary method to determine the oil content of copra and its meal. Determination of the oil content of copra takes 9 h, and for meal 6 h are necessary with Soxhlet extraction, whereas SFE determined oil contents in about 10 min. The extremely high oil content of copra makes grinding difficult, as the sample becomes very gummy and it is difficult to remove the entire sample from the grinder. Adding diatomaceous earth to the sample before grinding eliminated the difficulties of cleaning the grinder and also enabled very fast SFE extractions. The variances for Soxhlet and SFE were not significantly different from each other (P 0.10) in both copra and meal oil contents. The 95 percent confidence interval around the mean differences (SFE-Soxhlet) was (-0.35, 0.90) and (0.08, 0.26) and for copra and meal, respectively. Although the SFE meal oil content (9.81percent) was significantly higher than the Soxhlet meal oil content (9.64percent), the size of the average difference (0.17percent) was relatively small. This small difference was considered acceptable owing to the ability to use SFE in real-time process control. Therefore, SFE can be used to determine the oil content in copra and its meal in less than 10 min.Supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) was used as a primary method to determine the oil content of copra and its meal. Determination of the oil content of copra takes 9 h, and for meal 6 h are necessary with Soxhlet extraction, whereas SFE determined oil contents in about 10 min. The extremely high oil content of copra makes grinding difficult, as the sample becomes very gummy and it is difficult to remove the entire sample from the grinder. Adding diatomaceous earth to the sample before grinding eliminated the difficulties of cleaning the grinder and also enabled very fast SFE extractions. The variances for Soxhlet and SFE were not significantly different from each other (P 0.10) in both copra and meal oil contents. The 95 percent confidence interval around the mean differences (SFE-Soxhlet) was (-0.35, 0.90) and (0.08, 0.26) and for copra and meal, respectively. Although the SFE meal oil content (9.81percent) was significantly higher than the Soxhlet meal oil content (9.64percent), the size of the average difference (0.17percent) was relatively small. This small difference was considered acceptable owing to the ability to use SFE in real-time process control. Therefore, SFE can be used to determine the oil content in copra and its meal in less than 10 min.