Canadian Journal of Chemical Engineering, Vol.96, No.10, 2273-2281, 2018
Extraction of wax-like materials from cereals
In this study, a comparison of the wax extraction process from rice, sorghum, and wheat using liquid nitrogen was done with respect to the traditional solvent extraction method using n-hexane. For this purpose, these cereals were immersed in liquid nitrogen (1-4 cycles with different time intervals and different rest times between cycles). The results showed that waxes could be extracted by liquid nitrogen, but with a lower yield. When compared to the n-hexane extraction method, the extracted amounts of waxes with liquid nitrogen were 5, 7.5, and 9.3 times lower, but the extraction times were 2.3, 5.5, and 11.25 times shorter for wheat, rice, and sorghum, respectively. No residue was left in wax-like materials extracted with liquid nitrogen. While SEM depicted that the outer layer of waxes on the grains could be extracted by liquid nitrogen, GC-MS and GC-FID showed that the extracted waxes had similar compositions in both cycle extraction methods. These results could point out a novel environmentally-friendly method to extract waxes from cereals that could be useful for certain applications.