The industrial extraction of oils is carried out by pressing followed by hexane extraction; this process is on the one hand a generator of Volatile Organic Compounds and on the other hand presents certain risks at industrial safety and the health of personnel level.
The research team of the INPL Biocatalysis-Bioprocesses Laboratory of Nancy (Michel GIRARDIN, Professor, Lionel MUNIGLIA, Head of Conferences and Guillaume RICOCHON PhD) in partnership with the ITERG technology unit has carried out research work for 3 years on:
“Aqueous enzymatic extraction of oil from seeds to obtain proteins with high nutritional and functional qualities”.
Firstly, structural identification work was carried out to obtain knowledge of the cellular walls of colza and sunflower seeds, in order to be able to target the choice of hydrolytic enzymes to be used in their destructuring.
According to a screening plan, “suitable enzymatic cocktails” were perfected; these are currently being tested on quantities involving several kg of oleaginous seeds.
Qualitative tests performed on oil extracted in aqueous phase show encouraging results. The proteins extracted in aqueous phase appear to be much less degraded than those obtained using hexane.
This opens up new prospects for developing these compounds, the current use of which is limited to animal feed. Proteins, or peptides, with high added value could therefore be produced and greatly offset any extra cost generated by extraction in aqueous phase compared with traditional extraction using solvent.