ABSTRACT
The production and consumption of major vegetable oils increased from 60 million tons in 1991 to more than 90 million in 2003. The major vegetable oils in the world are soybean, palm, rapeseed, sunflower, peanut, cottonseed, palm kernel, and coconut. Fats and oils are prevalent in many foods throughout the world and they are a required component of every diet. Fats and oils are a major source of storage energy; they have important roles in the body’s metabolic processes and the absorption of fat-soluble nutrients, and play an essential role in the processing, quality, and organoleptic and texture properties of food products. Mechanical pressing was the method of extraction more widely used in vegetable oil recovery before the introduction of solvent extraction. The refining of edible oils comprises the entire process that generates a final product from a crude oil. This processing step can be done with or without prior degumming of the crude.
