The results in Table 7 show that extractions with the solvents
acetone and isopropanol did not possess significant differences at
a significance level of 5%, and isopropanol and ethanol also performed
equally well. Under these conditions, acetone and isopropanol
were the best solvents for extracting the oil. The extraction
durations that were used also did not differ significantly at a significance
level of 5%; thus, the shortest extraction time can be used to
lower operational costs. Analogous results can be observed with
the seed to solvent ratio, which results in the choice of a 1/4 seed
to solvent ratio based on economic considerations. Thus, the best
operational conditions for the shaker extraction of oil from passion
fruit seeds would be to use acetone or isopropanol as the extraction
solvent for a period of 8 h at a seed to solvent ratio of 1/4.
Hexane was used as an extraction solvent to evaluate the
extraction of oil in a conventional hexane extraction process with
shaker in Erlenmeyer flasks containing the solvent and the ground
seeds at 40 C and shaken at 40 rpm., and the results are shown in