Abstract：Aqueous extraction processing (AEP) is an environmentally friendly method to extract oil from various plants at a moderate temperature. However, the AEP alsohave several limitations. Firstly, the cream can be inevitably produced to form a sort of highly stable oil-in-water emulsiondue to the adoption of water, stirring and centrifugation during processing. The formed emulsion become difficult to break completely, resulting in a huge challenge for the AEP performance. Secondly, the water that used in AEP normally serves as an extraction medium, but the usage of excessive water can result in the formation of thick suspension, which making it hard to directly release free oil. In general, the ratio of seed to water 1:5 kg/L or even higher was mostly chosen as the optimal ratio to eliminate the thick suspension as well as stable cream. However, the substantial consumption of water increased the treatment cost of subsequent wastewater after processing. A modified aqueous extraction of flaxseed oil was investigated using a low consumptionof water under acidic wetting and drying, in order to enhance the AEP extracted yield of free flaxseed oil,while decrease the consumption of enzyme and water. The results showed that the yield of free oil was improved significantly due to the solubility effects of flaxseed protein under the pretreatment of acidic moisture-conditioning plus drying. In untreated flaxseed kernels, the free oil yield was only 18.95% ± 0.91%, while 71.29% ± 1.87% of the extracted oil went preferentially into the cream fraction. By contrast, the free oil yield increased to 83.27%±0.67% with the pretreatment of acidic moisture-conditioning plus drying. There was a vast increase in the amount of protein distribution in sediment phase under the pretreatment (from 33.34% ± 0.34% to 60.25% ± 0.44%), while the protein distribution in aqueous phase consequently decreased from 66.74±1.04% to 39.78%±0.66%. Processing conditions of aqueous extraction were also optimized by single-factor experiments, and the optimal parameters were obtained as follows: the extraction temperature was 50 ℃ , pH value was 9.0, the ratio of flaxseed to water was 1: 2.5 kg / L, extraction time was twohours. The recovery of free oil was achieved 82.88%±0.30% under the optimum conditions. Due to the increase of protein content in sediment phase and low flaxseed to water ratio of 1:2.5 kg/L, a part of oil was entrapped in sediment phase, which limited the further improvement of total oil yield. The sediment phase was further extracted by the aqueous phase plus deionized water,wherethe quality of deionized water was 50% quality of raw materials. The oil that distributed in sediment phase decreased from 3.97%±0.11% to 2.09%±0.04%after the second extraction. Subsequently, different enzyme and freezethaw were used to treat the demulsification of residual emulsion.The total yield of free flaxseed oil was 93.44%±0.29% after the residual emulsion was demulsified with papain. After detecting the characteristic value of flaxseed oil from aqueous extraction processing and pressing extraction, the experiment came to a conclusion:There were no significant differences that observed on therefractive index, iodine value, conjugated diene value and conjugated triene value. Although the peroxide value of flaxseed oil by aqueous extraction processing was slightly higher than that by pressing extraction,it still well below the maximum value of cooking oil (10 mmol/kg).These findings demonstrate that the proposed pretreatment with low water consumption under acidic moisture-conditioning plus dryingis suitable for the aqueous extraction of flaxseed oil. Therefore, this presented study can provide a promising technology for the extraction of flaxseed oil, where can increase the free oil recovery, while reduce the water consumption and the amount of enzyme.