Abstract: Sunflower oil, with soy, canola and palm, is one of the four major vegetable oils making up about 10% of the world’s supply. Unfortunately, Ukraine and Southern Russia provide around half of the sunflower oil in the world and the war in the region is having a bad effect on the industry. The presentation will serve as an introduction to a session dedicated to various aspects of sunflower seeds and oil. Sunflower seeds contain approximately 40% oil and the most common process to obtain the oil is to press the seeds and then solvent extract the press cake, although pressing on its own is sometimes used. Unlike some other oils the composition of sunflower oil means that it is often practical to remove the free fatty acid (FFA) either by chemical refining (neutralizing the acid with alkali to form soap) or physical refining (distilling the fatty acid by steam stripping.) Physical refining is more practical the higher the FFA content. Sunflower typically has an FFA content of 1 to 2% compared with soybean, typically < 1%, which is mostly chemically refined and palm oil, typically ~5%, which is mostly physically refined. An important feature of sunflower oil is the high amount of wax in the oil, +/- 1000ppm, which makes the oil cloudy. This presentation will cover winterization which is the process of cooling the oil and filtering out the wax crystals. Another presentation in the session will examine the use of centrifugal separators for wax removal.