Natural compounds obtained through centrifugal molecular distillation.
Soybean oil deodorized distillate (SODD) is a byproduct from refining edible soybean oil; however, the deodorization process removes unsaponifiable materials, such as sterols and tocopherols. Tocopherols are highly added value materials. Molecular distillation has large potential to be used in order to concentrate tocopherols, because it uses very low levels of temperatures because of the high vacuum and short operating time for separation and, also, it does not use solvents. However, nowadays, the conventional way to recover tocopherols is carrying out chemical reactions prior to molecular distillation, making the process not so suitable to deal with natural products. The purpose of this work is to use only molecular distillation in order to recover tocopherols from SODD. Experiments were performed in the range of 140-220 degrees C. The feed flow rate varied from 5 to 15 g/min. The objective of this study was to remove the maximum amount of free fatty acids (FFA) and, so, to increase the tocopherol concentration without add any extra component to the system. The percentage of FFA in the distillate stream of the molecular still is larger at low feed flow rates and low evaporator temperatures, avoiding thermal decomposition effects.
Ito
Vanessa Mayumi
VM
Separation Process Development Laboratory, School of Chemical Engineering, State University of Campinas, PO Box 6066, 13081-970 Campinas, Brazil. vanessa@lopca.feq.unicamp.br
Martins
Patricia Fazzio
PF
Batistella
César Benedito
CB
Maciel Filho
Rubens
R
Maciel
Maria Regina Wolf
MR
D002498:Centrifugation / Q000379:methods*; D005591:Chemical Fractionation / Q000379:methods*; D005230:Fatty Acids, Nonesterified / Q000302:isolation & purification*; D019649:Food Industry; D006358:Hot Temperature; D007220:Industrial Waste / Q000517:prevention & control*; D013024:Soybean Oil / Q000302:isolation & purification*; D013696:Temperature; D024505:Tocopherols / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000302:isolation & purification*
D005230:Fatty Acids, Nonesterified; D007220:Industrial Waste; D013024:Soybean Oil; D024505:Tocopherols