Extraction of oil from high-moisture tuna liver by subcritical dimethyl ether: feasibility and optimization by the response surface method

The purpose of this paper is to explore the possibilities of subcritical dimethyl ether extraction (SDME) of oil from tuna liver with high-moisture content. The results showed that the oil and water were successfully co-extracted from the liver, and could be easily separated by centrifugation. In addition, the response surface method was employed to optimize the process parameters of SDME, including temperature/pressure, time and stirring speed. It was predicted that a temperature/pressure of 42/0.80 °C/MPa, time of 50 min and stirring speed of 925 rpm were the optimum within the experimental ranges, with an oil yield of 17.46 ± 0.23%. Furthermore, supercritical carbon dioxide extraction (SC-CO(2)) was studied comparatively. Only minor differences were observed between the oils extracted by SDME and SC-CO(2), which indicated the high-quality of the SDME-oil. With no freeze-drying procedure and the relatively low pressure used in SDME, SDME could be a promising technique for extraction of marine fish liver oil.