African Shea Butter Properties Related to Common Extraction Technologies: A Review

Shea butter is an important lipid material for food, cosmetic and pharmaceutical industries. Most of the shea butter consumed in the world comes from Africa. The extraction protocol is not standardized among all regions of production. It can be done using either traditional or improved (semi-mechanical) processes. The quality of shea butter and its composition depend on multiple factors such as the edaphic parameters, morphology and harvesting method of the fruits, treatment applied to fruits, nuts and kernels, respectively. In this paper, all traditional and improved extractions processes reported, including the enormous possible variants, were reviewed and summarized. Several optimal conditions have been defined for both the traditional and the modern processes. Nevertheless, we are far from processes harmonization, and therefore from the best conditions of shea butter processing. The screw press extraction was the most widely used among the modern processes due to its yield of butter extraction of about 82 %. Microwave-assisted extraction gave the highest butter yield, 88 %, and traditional shea butter extraction was about 20 %-35 %.