Separation of Acylglycerides Obtained by Enzymatic Esterification Using Solvent Extraction

DANIEL SÁNCHEZ; GABRIELA TONETTO; MARÍA L. FERREIRA

JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN OIL CHEMISTS SOCIETY (JAOCS)

SPRINGER

Lugar: Berlin; Año: 2014 vol. 91 p. 261 - 270

0003-021X

New avenues to add value to glycerol are currentlybeing explored. One of them is the synthesis ofstructured lipids through glycerol esterification. In this work we have analyzed the recovery and purification ofdicaprin obtained by esterification of glycerol with capric acid (C) in heptane, mediated by Lipozyme RM IM. This is an intermediate step to obtain lipids MLM. In the firststage, the diglyceride synthesis MGM (being G a central HCOH) was carried out. When M = C, the diglyceride is CGC. Recovery of the diglyceride CGC is required to carry out the esterification of the sn-2 position with palmitic acid(P), thus obtaining the triglyceride CPC. Different solvents were evaluated using Ecofac 1.0 (a molecular designsoftware solvent) through a theoretical approach to explore the best solvents for the acylglycerides separation. Then,the performance of the selected solvents to separate dicaprin from mono and tricaprin was experimentally studied in a liquid to liquid extraction process. Previously, the remaining fatty acid had been neutralized. With liquid liquid extraction in three simple steps, using ethanol/water, 94 %of the dicaprin obtained by enzymatic esterification was recovered with a purity of 89 % (wt%). It was also possible to obtain dicaprin with a purity of 97 % but with a yield of 56 %.