Another quality attribute of cardamom oil is the fatty acid composition. As shown in Table 3 cardamom seeds distributed 17 different fatty acids. In addition, degraded products appeared on the GC–MS profile. Under certain SFE conditions there
were remarkable changes in the fatty acid composition of the extracts. For example decreasing the pressure to 10MPa and 308K caused the recovery of C18:1 and C18:2 acids to considerably decrease, while C14:0, C17:0 and unidentified fatty acid derivatives (most likely oxidized products) tended to increase in the extracts obtained under such extraction conditions. By lowering the temperature to the sub-critical range (298K or 25 ◦C) degradation of fatty acids could be moderated. These results indicated that complete recovery of plant oils with extraction at 10MPa needs more than 3–6 h to be achieved. Oxidation of fatty acids is expected to be accelerated particularly at high temperatures, therefore, such extraction should be performed at lower temperatures.