Effect of various extraction conditions on the phenolic contents of pomegranate seed oil

Pomegranate seeds are byproducts of the pomegranate juice industry. Because of the presence of large amounts of certain pharmaceutical and nutraceutical components in the seeds, a proper extraction method to obtain these components is highly demanded in the food industry. In this study, the effect of different extraction methods on the total phenolic contents of the oil extracted from pomegranate seeds of the Malas variety from Shahreza, Iran, was investigated. Four different extraction methods including normal stirring, Soxhlet, microwave irradiation and ultrasonic irradiation using two types of organic solvents as well as a supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) method using CO2 as solvent were applied. The different organic solvents of this study did not indicate any significant differences in the total phenolic contents of the extracted oils, but the extracted oils from the various conditions of SFE indicated wide changes in the amount of phenolic compounds (7.8-72.1 mg/g). The total phenolic content of the extracted oil from one of the SFE runs was several times greater than those in the extracted oils using organic solvents.