Grape Seed Oil Extraction Methods

The oil content of grape seed is 14%~17%. Grape seed oil contains a variety of vitamin, trace elements and essential mineral elements of the human body (calcium, iron, potassium, copper, zinc, manganese and cobalt). It is recognized as a kind of high nutritional healthcare oil product. Nowadays, grape seed oil is widely used as edible oil, food additives, raw materials for cosmetics and drugs industries.

Grape Seed Oil (left), Grape Seed Extracts (right)

Grape Seed Oil Extraction Methods Comparison

The processing of grape seed oil includes traditional oil pressing, hexane solvent extraction, supercritical extraction and subcritical extraction.

Grape Seed Oil Pressing / Expelling Process

Grape Seeds → Drying → Crushing → Expelling → Filtering → Refining → Refined Grape Seed Oil
Advantages: Simple processing techniques, low equipment cost;
Disadvantages: high residual oil ratio in oil cakes or meals; low oil yield efficiency and large energy comsumption.

Traditional Solvent Extraction Process

Grape Seeds → Screening → Crushing → Flaking → Solvent Extracting (Hexane) → Filtering → Distillation → Crude Oil → Refining → Refined Grape Seed Oil
Advantages: It is currently the common method of oilseeds processing. The yield is much higher than mechanical pressing, and it is easy to realize industrial scale production.
Disadvantages: Solvent residual; Some natural ingredients of the raw material will be destroyed by the high processing temperature; high requirements for further processing.

Supercritical Extraction Technology

Grape Seeds → Drying → Crushing → CO₂ Extraction → Decompression Separation → Crude Oil → Refining → Refined Grape Seed Oil
Advantages: High recovery, no solvent residual, bright color and high quality of final oil.
Disadvantages: Because of complexity of the process, it is difficult to control and the equipment investment is very high. Besides, it is not available for large scale production.

Low Temperature Subcritical Extraction

Since the active substances of high added value in natural products are all heat sensitive. When extracting by traditional solvent extraction process, these active substance will be easily destroyed.

Supercritical CO₂ extraction can get better result, but it must be processed in ultra-high pressure condition which is required to be more than 25 MPa. This high requirements on pressure result in difficulties for realizing industrialized production. Moreover, high cost of equipment and processing making this extraction process hard to be accepted by most businessmen or investors.

Advantages of Subcritical Grape Seed Oil Extracting: normal temperature extracting, low temperature desolventizing; By improving the process of vacuum degree, make the solvent evaporating rapidly in 10 ~ 50 ℃. The extraction process is under low temperature and vacuum-tight conditions, the heat-sensitive active ingredients is kept 100% original, no destroy, no oxidation. Thus, subcritical extraction is the ideal technology for extracting effective and active ingredients of natural plants and animals, such as oil, pigment, protein, plant powder degreasing, and getting other animal & plant extracts.

In practical production, you should choose the grape seed oil extraction method and equipment depending on investment budget and your particular requirements on capacity, final oil products quality and so on. Don’t hesitate to get in touch with us and tell us your needs, then you can get a detailed and customized business plan including equipment list and cost.

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Grape is a worldwide fruit. Its cultivation area and yield is the first in the world for a lone time. In the meantime, the output of grape wastes is also increasing year by year. In grape wine industry, about 20% ~ 30% of the total fresh fruit are left as residues including grape seeds. Actually, the grape seeds which account for about 7% ~ 10% of the total fresh fruit have a great wide application. These seeds can be processed for extracting grape seed oil, Procyanidine, Tannin and other biologically active products.