The purpose of this paper is to study the physical refining process of grape seed oil using molecular distillation. Crude oil was submitted to three preliminary steps: water degumming, dewaxing and bleaching and to a final deacidification step that was accomplished by molecular distillation. The influence of two operative conditions in molecular distillation step was considered: feed flow (0.5-1.5 ml/min) and evaporation temperature (200-220 degrees C), in relation to free fatty acids content and tocopherols recovery in the refined oil. It was found that the target free fatty acids content (less than 0.1%) could be obtained at high evaporation temperatures, for all the studied feed flows. High tocopherol recovery was obtained in two regions of the domain: the region of low feed flows and low temperatures; and the region of high feed flows and high temperatures. So, it was found that it is possible to employ high feed flows (1.5 ml/min), that allow high outputs, and high temperatures (220 degrees C) to obtain refined oils with low enough free fatty acid content and high tocopherol recovery (in the order of 100%). (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.