Extraction Process Of Natural Vitamin E From Palm Oil Deodorizer Distillate

The new extraction process of natural vitamin E from deodorizer distillates of palm oil by methyl esterification of free fatty acids and specific adsorption on chemically modified adsorption resins have been studied.Methyl esterification of free fatty acids could be conducted in a fixed bed continuous process. When the fixed bed continuous process was used, the appropriate catalyst was strong acid cation exchange resin. The effect of mass ratio of methanol to deodorizer distillates, temperature, residence time, and flow rate to conversion of free fatty acids was studied. The recovery of tocopherols was more than 99.5% at every esterification reaction.Distillation of tocopherols and tocotrienols from methyl esterification products was conducted in a set of short path molecular distillation. At the first stage, suitable operation conditions were as follows: distillation temperature 160¹65℃, system pressure 0.17 mbar, feed rate 10¹2 ml/min, agitating speed 300 r/min. At the second stage, the appropriate process conditions for the purification were: distillation temperature 210²20℃, system pressure 10^-3 mBar, feed rate 7⁹ ml/min, and agitating speed 300 r/min.The content of Vitamin E was raised from 0.1775% to 1.5% by 2 stages molecular distillation.By using anhydrous ethanol as solvent, the adsorption equilibrium of tocopherols and tocotrienols in methyl esterification products on modified adsorption resin was determined by static method.