Optimization of hot air and microwave pretreatment for enhancing the mechanical expression yield of Simarouba glauca oil

The study was conducted to investigate the effect of hot air and microwave pretreatment on the oil yield from the Simarouba glauca oil kernels. The oil was expressed by a single screw press mechanical oil expeller. Response surface methodology was employed to optimize the pretreatment conditions to achieve the maximum oil yield. The developed empirical model was found to be accurate for predicting oil yield (R² of 0.9983 and 0.9997) and sediment content (R² of 0.9998 and 0.9950) in case of hot air and microwave pretreatment respectively. The optimized condition obtained for the hot air pretreatment was 88.53 °C and 13.93 min, while for the microwave pretreatment was 467.5 Watt and 123 s. The oil yield was increased from 18.5 ± 0.41% to 39.39 ± 0.32% and 40.37 ± 0.25% for hot air and microwave pretreated samples respectively at optimized conditions. Thus, the optimized conditions for the pre-treatment and extraction of oil can be further employed in the industries for enhancing the oil yield.