Extraction of oil from pomegranate seeds as a waste product of the juice industry using supercrit ical carbon dioxide and subcritical propane was studied in this work. The influence of the main operating con ditions of extraction, namely, the temperature and pressure of extraction on the oil extraction yield and the correspondent fatty acid profile were analyzed and reported here. Soxhlet extraction with n-hexane was done for comparison with supercritical extraction resulting in a maximum yield of oil of 22.31 wt %. Supercritical car bon dioxide and subcritical propane extracted up to 58.53% (corresponding to maximum yield of 13.06 wt %) and 76.73% (corresponding to maximum yield of 17.12 wt %) of the total amount of pomegranate seed oil as measured using Soxhlet extraction, respectively. Results indicated that the subcritical propane is a suitable and selective solvent for the extraction of the pomegranate seed oil in function of smaller times and pressures employed compared to carbon dioxide extraction. The fatty acid composition of the extracted oil showed the presence of fatty acids of C 16 , C 18 , C 20 , C 22 , and C 24 carbon chains. Punicic (C 18.3 ) was the major fatty acids and comprise up to 70% of the total fatty acid content of the extracted oil among all samples. Finally, Lack's plug flow model as developed by Sovova was applied to both extraction systems and a good agreement with the experimental results was obtained.

In this work, three extraction methods: Soxhlet, microwave irradiation and ultrasonic irradiation for extraction of lipids from spent coffee grounds were carried out using n‐hexane and petroleum benzene as solvent. Also, supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) using CO2 under different conditions was used for comparison. Different methods of extraction with organic solvents showed significant differences in the extraction yields. However, no significant differences were found when a given method (e.g., microwave irradiation) was applied using different organic solvents. On the other hand, different extraction conditions from the various runs of SFE resulted in significantly different extraction yields, all of which were higher than those of the other extraction methods using organic solvents except the Soxhlet extraction. No significant differences were observed in the fatty acid compositions of the extracted oils using organic solvents. However, the fatty acid compositions of the oils extracted under different conditions of SFE indicated significant differences among several fatty acids. PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS Supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) can be applied as a green technology to the oil extraction of spent coffee grounds (SCGs), as a waste product of the coffee industry, demonstrated in this work. Extraction using supercritical carbon dioxide is a feasible food processing unit operation, and no regulatory hurdles. The extraction yield of oil from SCGs was obtained at 98.14% relative to the Soxhlet extraction. This trend demonstrates that SFE can be a potential candidate for oil production from the waste product of the coffee industry.

Recently, we successfully prepared medium density polyethylene (MDPE) nanocomposite with 3 wt %, 6 wt %, and 9 wt % cloisite Na+ and the thermal stability of nanocomposite was investigated using the thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). The TGA in air atmosphere showed significantly improved thermal stability of 3 wt %, 6 wt %, and 9 wt % cloisite Na+ nanocomposite in comparison to pure MDPE. In this paper, the results of TGA of MDPE/cloisite Na+ nanocomposites were predicted by the artificial neural network (ANN). The ANN and adaptive neural fuzzy inference systems (ANFIS) models were developed to predict the degradation of MDPE/cloisite Na+ nanocomposite with temperature. The results revealed that there was a good agreement between predicted thermal behavior and actual values. The findings of this study also showed that the artificial neural networks and ANFIS techniques can be applied as a powerful tool.

No abstract