Production and Characterization of Oil from Fishes

Abstract

Production and characterization of fish oil were carried out using soxhlet apparatus and n-Hexane as the solvent for extraction. The extraction was carried out at the boiling point of the solvent. Five different species of fishes were used for the experiment. From the result of the extraction, it was observed that the fish A (Mormyrups deliciousus) and fish E (shawa) have a good percentage of oil content of about 30.22% and 24.02% of its dry mass, respectively, while cat fish, tilapia and mud fish have 6.72, 14.52 and 17.92, respectively. [1] reported a similar observation. The iodine and refractive indexes of this study is in agreement with those obtained by [1], and also falls within the specification of the standard value. These values, therefore, show that fish oil is a non drying oil, a good lubricant and a cure for goiter, while saponification and acid values were found to be higher than the standard value. However, the boiling points of the oil were close to the boiling point of water.