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Vegetable oils, or vegetable fats, are extracted from seeds or from other parts of . Like , vegetable fats are mixtures of . Soybean oil, grape seed oil, and cocoa butter are examples of , or fats from seeds. Olive oil, palm oil, and rice bran oil are examples of fats from other parts of plants. In common usage, vegetable oil may refer exclusively to vegetable fats which are liquid at room temperature. Vegetable oils are usually edible.
Vegetable oils have been used as lighting fuel for lamps, cooking, medicine and lubrication. Palm oil has long been recognized in West and Central African countries, and European merchants trading with West Africa occasionally purchased palm oil for use as a cooking oil in Europe. It became highly sought-after commodity by British traders for use as an industrial lubricant for machinery during Britain's Industrial Revolution.
In 1780, Carl Wilhelm Scheele demonstrated that fats were derived from glycerol. Thirty years later Michel Eugène Chevreul deduced that these fats were esters of fatty acids and glycerol. Wilhelm Normann, a German chemist, introduced the hydrogenation of liquid fats in 1901, creating what later became known as , leading to the development of the global production of margarine and vegetable shortening.
In the United States, cottonseed oil was developed, and marketed by Procter & Gamble as a creamed shortening – Crisco – as early as 1911. were happy to have someone haul away the cotton seeds. The extracted oil was refined and partially Hydrogenation to give a solid at room temperature and thus mimic natural lard, and canned under nitrogen gas. Compared to the rendered lard Procter & Gamble was already selling to consumers, Crisco was cheaper, easier to stir into a recipe, and could be stored at room temperature for two years without turning rancid.
Soybeans are protein-rich, and the medium viscosity oil rendered from them was high in polyunsaturates. Henry Ford established a soybean research laboratory, developed soybean plastics and a soy-based synthetic wool, and built a car "almost entirely" out of soybeans. Roger Drackett had a successful new product with Windex, but he invested heavily in soybean research, seeing it as a smart investment. By the 1950s and 1960s, soybean oil had become the most popular vegetable oil in the US; today it is second only to palm oil. In 2018–2019, world production was at 57.4 MT with the leading producers including China (16.6 MT), US (10.9 MT), Argentina (8.4 MT), Brazil (8.2 MT), and EU (3.2 MT).
The early 20th century also saw the start of the use of vegetable oil as a fuel in diesel engines and in heating oil burners. Rudolf Diesel designed his engine to run on vegetable oil. The idea, he hoped, would make his engines more attractive to farmers who had a source of fuel readily available. Diesel's first engine ran on its own power for the first time in Augsburg, Germany, on 10 August 1893 on nothing but peanut oil. In remembrance of this event, 10 August has been declared "International Biodiesel Day". The first patent on Biodiesel was granted in 1937. Periodic petroleum shortages spurred research into vegetable oil as a diesel substitute during the 1930s and 1940s, and again in the 1970s and early 1980s when straight vegetable oil enjoyed its highest level of scientific interest. The 1970s also saw the formation of the first commercial enterprise to allow consumers to run straight vegetable oil in their vehicles. However, biodiesel, produced from oils or fats using transesterification is more widely used. Led by Brazil, many countries built biodiesel plants during the 1990s, and it is now widely available for use in motor vehicles, and is the most common biofuel in Europe today. In France, biodiesel is incorporated at a rate of 8% in the fuel used by all French diesel vehicles.
In the mid-1970s, Canadian researchers developed a low-erucic-acid rapeseed cultivar. Because the word "rape" was not considered optimal for marketing, they coined the name "canola" (from "Canada Oil low acid"). The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved use of the canola name in January 1985, and U.S. farmers started planting large areas that spring. Canola oil is lower in saturated fats, and higher in monounsaturates. Canola is very thin (unlike corn oil) and flavorless (unlike olive oil), so it largely succeeds by displacing soy oil, just as soy oil largely succeeded by displacing cottonseed oil.
The production of vegetable oils went up 125% between 2000 and 2020, driven by a sharp increase in palm oil.
Oils can be heated to temperatures significantly higher than the boiling point of water, , and used to frying. Oils for this purpose must have a high flash point. Such oils include both the major cooking oils – soybean oil, rapeseed oil, canola oil, sunflower oil, safflower oil, peanut oil, cottonseed oil, etc. – and tropical oils, such as Coconut oil, Palm oil, and rice bran. The latter are particularly valued in Asian cultures for high-temperature cooking, because of their unusually high flash points.
Many vegetable oils are used to make soaps, skin products, candles, perfumes and other personal care and cosmetic products. Some oils are particularly suitable as , and are used in making paints and other wood treatment products. They are used in alkyd resin production. Dammar oil (a mixture of linseed oil and dammar resin), for example, is used almost exclusively in treating the hulls of wooden boats. Vegetable oils are increasingly being used in the electrical industry as insulators as vegetable oils are not toxic to the environment, biodegradable if spilled and have high flash point and fire points. However, vegetable oils are less stable chemically, so they are generally used in systems where they are not exposed to oxygen, and they are more expensive than crude oil distillate. Synthetic tetraesters, which are similar to vegetable oils but with four fatty acid chains compared to the normal three found in a natural ester, are manufactured by Fischer esterification. Tetraesters generally have high stability to oxidation and have found use as engine lubricants. Vegetable oil is being used to produce biodegradable hydraulic fluid and lubricant.
One limiting factor in industrial uses of vegetable oils is that all such oils are susceptible to becoming Rancidification. Oils that are more stable, such as ben oil or mineral oil, are thus preferred for industrial uses. Castor oil has numerous industrial uses, owing to the presence of a hydroxyl group on the fatty acid. Castor oil is a precursor to Nylon 11. Castor oil may also be reacted with epichlorohydrin to make a glycidyl ether which is used as a diluent and flexibilizer with epoxy resins.
The NNFCC estimates that the total net greenhouse gas savings when using vegetable oils in place of fossil fuel-based alternatives for fuel production, range from 18 to 100%.National Non-Food Crops Centre. GHG Benefits from Use of Vegetable Oils for Electricity, Heat, Transport, and Industrial Purposes, NNFCC 10-016
! Method !! Percentage extracted | |
| 20–30% | |
| 34–37% | |
| 40–43% |
Supercritical carbon dioxide can be used as a non-toxic alternative to other solvents.
Hydrogenating vegetable oil is done by raising a blend of vegetable oil and a metal catalyst, typically nickel, in near-vacuum to very high temperatures, and introducing hydrogen. This causes the carbon atoms of the oil to break double-bonds with other carbons. Each carbon atom becomes single-bonded to an individual hydrogen atom, and the double bond between carbons can no longer exist. A fully hydrogenated oil, also called a saturated fat, has had all of its double bonds converted into single bonds. If a polyunsaturated oil is left incompletely hydrogenated (not all of the double bonds are reduced to single bonds), then it is a "partially hydrogenated oil" (PHO). An oil may be hydrogenated to increase resistance to Rancidification (oxidation) or to change its physical characteristics. As the degree of saturation is raised by full or partial hydrogenation, the oil's viscosity and melting point increase.
While full hydrogenation produces largely saturated fatty acids, partial hydrogenation results in the transformation of unsaturated cis fatty acids to trans fats in the oil mixture due to the heat used in hydrogenation. Partially hydrogenated oils and their trans fats have been linked to an increased risk of mortality from coronary heart disease, (Consultation on the health implications of alternatives to trans fatty acids: Summary of Responses from Experts) among other increased health risks. These concerns have led to regulations mandating the removal of partially hydrogenated oils from food.
| The most widely produced tropical oil, also used to make biofuel |
| One of the most widely consumed cooking oils |
| One of the most widely used cooking oils, also used as fuel. Canola is a variety (cultivar) of rapeseed. |
| A common cooking oil, also used to make biodiesel |
| A major food oil, often used in industrial food processing |
| From the seed of the African palm tree |
| Mild-flavored cooking oil |
| Used in cooking, cosmetics and soaps |
| Used in cooking, cosmetics, soaps and as a fuel for traditional oil lamps |
These figures include industrial and animal feed use. The majority of European rapeseed oil production is used to produce biodiesel, or used directly as fuel in diesel cars which may require modification to heat the oil to reduce its higher viscosity.
Other significant oils include:
Claims that seed oils are unhealthy are not supported by scientific evidence.
Recycled oil has numerous uses, including use as a direct fuel, as well as in the production of biodiesel, compound feed, pet food, soap, detergent, cosmetics, and industrial chemicals.
Since 2002, an increasing number of European Union countries have prohibited the inclusion of recycled vegetable oil from catering in animal feed. Used cooking oils from food manufacturing, however, as well as fresh or unused cooking oil, continue to be used in their animal feed.
From December 2014, all food products produced in the European Union were legally required to indicate the specific vegetable oil used in their manufacture, following the introduction of the Food Information to Consumers Regulation.
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