Grant: Engage Grants Program

Quality and oxidative stability of flaxseed oil is usually very fragile due to very high level of linolenic acid and relatively low amounts of natural antioxidants present in the oil. Pressing the oil from the seed requires protection to eliminate oxygen from atmosphere in an expeller and keeping this way until oil is packaged in the marketing containers. For this purpose inert gases are used which are introduced into expeller and all installation transporting flaxseed oil through processing steps. The most often nitrogen is used for this purpose however it protection is compromised due to small differences in physical parameters to oxygen. Partnering flaxseed oil producer in this project is using argon, which offers better protection however at very high cost. In this project the main objective is to replace currently used protecting gas with much cheapper carbon dioxide, the later is heavier than oxygen and easier removes it from the oil. Controlled storage stability experiments have to be run to compare protection and an effect of carbon dioxide on flaxseed oil. Stored oils will be assessed for oxidative degradation using standard analytical procedures, such as peroxide value, anisidine value, changes in composition of oil and sensory assessment. Additionally, quality of marketed flaxseed and similar in composition oils will be assessed to establish basic quality criteria and to provide marketing information for flaxseed oil produced by partnering company. For this part of the project variety of quality parameters will be assessed including composition of fatty acids, natural antioxidants and nutraceuticals such as phytosterols.