Processing of pomegranate seed waste and mass transfer studies of extraction of pomegranate seed oil

In this manuscript, an attempt has been made to study the effect of particle size, time, and temperature on the extraction of pomegranate seed oil (PSO) with hexane. Pomegranate seed powder fraction (9XXX) provided the highest yield of PSO than others, yielding 39% (w/v) oil extracted at room temperature (28–30 °C, 8 hr). The composition of oil extracted with different methods has been determined with a primary focus on the content of punicic acid (PA). Hexane extracted 9XXX fraction was found to be the best solvent for the high PA in PSO extraction at 28–30 °C. FT-IR showed that there are no unusual functional groups in the spectra in all extraction conditions. The method of principal component analysis (PCA) has been studied for individual fatty acids to the total variability of principal components. The mass transfer studies on extraction initially followed zero order rate up to 10 min, followed by first order rate transfer. Practical applications Pomegranate seeds are one of the major components of the marc. The pomegranate seed oil (PSO) is characterized by the presence of high concentration of punicic acid, which possesses various health beneficial properties, like antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anti-cancer, etc. The studies carried out enable to fractionate pomegranate seed powder into one of the fractions which yields not only the high content of oil at room temperature but also high content of punicic acid.