A new eco-friendly defatting process of peanuts by mechanical expression preserving structure integrity (MEPSI)

This article represents a scientific approach to the environment-friendly and energy saving processes which incited us to develop a new efficient, healthy, economical and less polluting defatting process. In this paper, mechanical oil extraction was conducted on peanuts by preserving their structure integrity and the process was followed by a quantitative and qualitative study on the physicochemical properties of the defatted grains in order to investigate the best extraction parameters. The described extraction process coupled to a reconstitution process by Intensification of Vaporization by Decompression to the Vacuum (IVDV) showed that the optimal conditions are 5% d.b. initial water content, 2 days at 4°C of homogenization period, pressing at around 10 MPa (at room temperature) for 3 to 4 min most preferably at a compression speed of 8mm/sec, using the appropriate process modification to avoid structure damages and loss of deteriorated seeds, then reconstituting by IVDV with a pressure of 0.9MPa applied for 10 sec on hydrated peanuts to 10% d.b.