Extraction and Determination of Essential Oil of Arachis hypogaea through Supercritical Fluid Extraction Coupled with GC-MS

< p>Peanut essential oils cover a big part of the human diet, containing various proteins and lipids. Optimized extraction of essential oils from peanut could acts an important role in food and pharmaceutical industries. The aim of this study was to validate a cost-effective green method with high recovery rates for extracting the peanut essential oils. Supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) was implemented for the extraction of oils from Arachis hypogaea. The experimental parameters of SFE such as pressure, temperature, modifier volume, static, and dynamic extraction time were optimized using a central composite design after a 2n–1 fractional factorial design. Chemical compositions of the SFE extract were characterized using the GC–MS. Optimum conditions for supercritical fluid extraction were the temperature of 65 °C, 10 min time for static extraction, the pressure of 350 atm, dynamic extraction time of 35 min, and modifier volume of 150 µL. Major components of the SFE extracted oils in optimum conditions were oleic acid (35%), linolic acid (7.4%), palmitic acid (5%), and stearic acid (4.5%). The extraction recovery based on the SFE varied at the range of 0.60–17.10% (w/w) under different conditions. SFE coupled with GC-MS was successfully implemented for extraction of the peanut essential oils and it is a green and cost-effective method which could potentially replace the existing methods in the food and pharmaceutical industry.