Chemistry Discovery Leads to Green Cooking Oil

KINGSTON, Ontario, CanadaA Queen's University chemistry professor has created a solvent that when combined with carbon dioxide extracts oil from soybeans and makes cooking oil production more environmentally friendly. Industries currently make cooking oils using hexane, a cheap, flammable solvent that is a neurotoxin and creates smog. The process also involves distillation, which uses large amounts of energy.

Philip Jessop, Canada Research Chair in Green Chemistry, created a new method of making oil that involves a switchable solvent. This solvent is hydrophobic, meaning it mixes with oils and doesnt like water. But when carbon dioxide is added, the solvent becomes hydrophilic, meaning it mixes with water and doesnt like to be in oil. So when carbonated watercarbon dioxide and wateris added to a mixture of the solvent and soybeans, the oil is extracted out of the soybeans and collected. When the carbon dioxide is removed, the solvent switches back to its hydrophobic state.

The water and the solvent can be used again so everything is recycled. The end result is you have extracted soybean oil and there is no energy-consuming distillation required, he said.

While this process has only been done in labs, Jessop has heard from cooking oil companies and GreenCentre Canada interested in his research. But the solvent is still years away before it can ever be used in large-scale oil manufacturing.