Bioactive Components of Commercial and Supercritical Carbon Dioxide Processed Wheat Germ Oil

Wheat germ oil (WGO) is a specialty product with a very high nutritional value. The chemical composition of both commercial and pilot scale supercritical carbon dioxide (SC‐CO 2 ) processed WGO was examined. This study showed that methods used for oil extraction and refining did not have a significant effect on the fatty acid composition of the oil. SC‐CO 2 extracted oil had a higher tocopherol content than that of commercially hexane extracted oil. The phospholipid content of the SC‐CO 2 extracted oil was very low indicating that the SC‐CO 2 extraction method could eliminate the degumming step from edible oil refining processes. Although the conventional chemical oil refining technique reduced the tocopherol content of the WGO, it was possible to concentrate tocopherols in WGO by using physical refining methods such as molecular distillation.