Oil Extraction Essay Example for Free

Oil Extraction tryWhen extracting lipids or fats from foods, both the method as well as the solvents chosen to perform a complete, or close to complete ancestry are important. If these two elements are not taken into consideration, the descent may not be complete, or the extract may contain a orotund quantity of unsought impurities. The natural fats and oil are mixtures of glycerides of fatty acids. Fats and oils are naturally occurring essential compounds which belong to a large group of water insoluble substances called lipids. Lipids are relatively non- paired molecules, they can be pulled out of a essay using relatively non-polar solvents. With a non-polar solvent, only non-polar molecules in the sample dissolve while polar ones do not. A solution to the problem of extracting trapped lipids is to use an extraction procedure such as the soxhlet that go forth help break up the polar barriers and allow the solvent to reach the non-polar compounds and extract them.In t his experiment, soxhlet extraction was used. Soxhlet extraction is an extraction method that uses chemical solvents. Oils from the algae are extracted through repeated washing, or percolation, with an organic solvent such as hexane or petroleum divinyl ether, under reflux in a surplus glassware. Copra, dried kernel of the coconut, was the sample used. Often though, the sample must be ground and prepared front to the extraction procedure in order to break up the cell membranes and other structures that would make extraction difficult. In this experiment, petroleum ether was used as the solvent due to its low boiling point, relatively non-toxic nature (when compared to chloroform or methanol), and of course because it is quite non-polar.When talking about ether, two kinds can be used in lipid extraction anhydrous diethyl ether CH3CH2OCH2CH3 and petroleum ether, which is a mixture of pentane (CH3CH2CH2CH2CH3) and hexane (CH3CH2CH2CH2CH2CH3). oil color ether is more non-polar, cheap er and less flammable than diethyl ether. Due to its greater non-polarity, petroleum ether will turn back a more specific extract than diethyl ether because it will only extract the most polar molecules. However, as petroleum ether may not be able to break apart close to of the more polar shells surrounding some lipids and give a near complete lipid extraction, diethyl ether is usually used despite its higher flammability and cost.