Extraction of Squalene from olive oil

Abstract

Squalene is a valuable component of the oil composed of 30 carbon atoms and is mainly used for cosmetic materials. The aim of this project is to study different techniques used for the extraction of Squalene from commercial olive oil and to compare the obtained quantities of Squalene between the three types of oil studied. The purpose of this report is to find Squalene in the Lebanese olive oil. For this purpose, three extraction methods, the esterification, the Soxhlet and the crystallization were studied and the experiments showed different quantities of Squalene in the different samples of oil under study By comparing the results, it is found that the Lebanese oil contains Squalene and the Soxhlet method is the most effective between the three methods extracting about 6.1E-04 grams of Squalene per grams of olive oil. The quality of Lebanese virgin olive oil is very satisfying regarding the Squalene content especially if compared with other Mediterranean olive oils and this is of great importance to the cosmetic and other industries. Lebanon can greatly benefit from Squalene extraction due to the presence of excess amounts of oil in the market that are threatened by the competition with the cheaper foreign oil.