Recent Developments in Phytosterol Recovery from Oil Deodorizer Distillates

The sterols naturally occurring in plants, known as “phytosterols”, constitute a class of secondary metabolites of the triterpene family with important biological functions. Phytosterols are in fact very important in some scientific and industrial fields. Thus, they are widely used by the pharmaceutical, food and cosmetic industries, which obtain them from various natural sources but especially from oil deodorizer oil distillates (ODDs), which are by-products of the oil refining industry. In fact, ODDs contain variable proportions of various interesting compounds including phytosterols. This paper reviews recent methods for recovering phytosterols from ODDs, which essentially rely on four different principles: molecular distillation, enzyme treatment, crystallization or extraction with supercritical carbon dioxide.