Comparison of extraction methods of virgin coconut oil: cold press, soxhlet and supercritical fluid extraction

In this study, many extraction methods (cold press, soxhlet, and different conditions supercritical fluid extraction (SFE)) have been tried and fatty acid contents have been examined with GC-FID and physicochemical analyses have been done. The yield is in the range of 20.75%-30.23%, with the highest oil recovery gained from the soxhlet extraction with n-hexane. Although the most efficient method is soxhlet, when the fatty acid contents are examined, it is seen that there is not much difference in terms of lauric acid content (50.87% and 53.19%, respectively) between SFE. Therefore, while there is SFE extraction with supercritical CO2 as solvent that we can do without using chemical solvents; instead of choosing the extraction techniques that we are using chemical solvents such as hexane (soxhlet) or that give low yield results (cold press), SFE has been determined as the appropriate method for coconut oil extraction. As a result, “green extraction” SFE is the best method to obtain coconut oil in terms of yield, fatty acid content, and health.