Vegetable oil which can be extracted from oilseed is considered one of the main components of food, and it can be also used for the production of non-conventional alternative fuels.
Vegetable oils constitutes an important component of human diet. Major edible vegetable oils in terms of production include from soybean, canola, sunflower and peanut. They are source of edible FAs (saturated, monounsaturated or polyunsaturated), which play an important role in cellular metabolism as a way to store energy and also by providing energy when required.
Oilseeds which can yield edible oils are also categorized into two subclasses.
*The first is conventional oilseed that can yield oils for every day edible purposes such as sunflower oil, canola oil, and soybean oil.
*The other class of oilseeds is non-conventional that yield oils that have some beneficial functional properties such as flaxseed oil and is normally used in rather small doses.
Vegetable oils are usually extracted from the oilseeds using hexane because of its high extraction power and low boiling point.
In industrial food manufacturing, where food matrices can be complex, unit operations rigorous, and finished products require certain minimum stability to last through the supply chain and the eventual consumption, the oils used in the formulations often require additional oxidative stability.
Vegetable oils
