Green cosmetics via bio-oil

The refining of crude vegetable oil results in an unused sidestream, the oil deodorizer distillate (ODD). Thisdistillate contains valuable ‘minors’, like squalene, tocopherols and sterols, which have applications in thecosmetic, pharmaceutical and nutrition industry. Therefore, their successful separation from this sidestream increases the viability of a refinery. The separation is achieved by supercritical esterification and supercritical CO2 extraction. The objective of this study is to simulate the process with Aspen® and model the kinetics with AVS®. Different ODD are investigated with HT soybean giving the highest yield. Additionally, an economic analysis is performed to estimate the process profitability