According to Tharos Ltd, the Santiago, Chile-based consultancy that developed the technique, the non-solvent and chemical-free extraction principle leaves no residue in the final product which is aimed at the human pharmaceutical and health supplement market.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe believe this to be a revolutionary concept because, unlike oil extraction processes used by all current, as well as almost all of the soon-to-arrive, South Antarctic krill operators, this process is chemical-free,\u201d says Dimitri Sclabos, general manager of Tharos and one of the inventors of the technique.<\/p>\n
At present several extraction processes are used to extract oil from krill, the tiny crustacean, Euphausia superba, found in huge quantities in Antarctic waters.<\/p>\n
According to Dimitri Sclabos, the normal food-grade and low quality krill oil extraction process involves cooking the raw material which is then pressed and the liquids separated\/cleaned by centrifuges and polishers. This is done onboard the catching vessel, he says.<\/p>\n
A non-traditional process uses decanters (or tricanters) to extract krill oil, he adds. The krill is cooked then later decanted and its liquids separated\/cleaned by centrifuges and polishers as before. This is also done onboard.<\/p>\n
Although no solvents are used in these two extraction methods, the oil yield is lower than that obtained using the Tharos method and the quality is poorer. \u201cThere is a very low content of EPA\/DHA [eicosapentaenoic acid and docosahexaenoic acid, the long chain omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids which are beneficial to human health] and almost no phospholids, which have great market value, while ours is very high in both,\u201d Mr Sclabos says.<\/p>\n
\u201cKrill oil obtained using our extraction method also contains astaxanthin, a powerful antioxidant.\u201d<\/p>\n
Other extraction methods are carried out on krill meal which has been previously processed onboard the fishing vessel, but then shipped to a land-based factory. It is here that solvent extraction is carried out. For example a Canadian company buys whole frozen krill from various sources and ships it to Canada where extraction takes place. \u201cThis process involves the use of solvents in a chemical reaction to separate lipids from other krill constituents,\u201d says Mr Sclabos.<\/p>\n
A Norwegian operator also uses solvent extraction, he says. The company manufactures high-fat krill meal at sea using a traditional meal processing line although it uses natural antioxidants. It freezes the meal and ships it to France where krill oil is extracted using solvents.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis method involves a double-heating process (meal first oil later) affecting overall molecular quality,\u201d says Mr Sclabos.<\/p>\n
Mr Sclabos admits that pharma-grade krill oils can be extracted using solvents, but says some residues may remain on the final product.<\/p>\n
\u201cSuch residues might be well within market regulation,\u201d he says, \u201cbut we think that a no-residue process is a much more valuable proposition to the end user. Our method eliminates the solvent application to get a quality krill oil with no residues at all and with a pharma-quality grade, plus a lower cost structure processing concept.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
According to Tharos Ltd, the Santiago, Chile-based consultancy that developed the technique, the non-solvent and chemical-free extraction principle leaves no residue in the final product which is aimed at the human pharmaceutical and health supplement market. \u201cWe believe this to be a revolutionary concept because, unlike oil extraction processes used by all current, as well […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11642,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-11641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-analysis"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11641"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11641\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11643,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11641\/revisions\/11643"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11641"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=11641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}