The Synthesis And Purification Of D-α-tocopherol Succinate

As the derivative of J-α-tocopherol, d -α-tocopheryl succinate is stable, and has anticancer effect. Therefore it is promising in the field of medicine. In this paper, we studied the preparation, separation and crystallization of J-α-tocopherol succinate.Firstly, we studied the preparation of d -α-tocopheryl succinate, we use high content d -α-tocopherol and succinate anhydride as raw materials, triethanolamine as the catalyst, n-hexane as the solvent, J-α-tocopherol succinate was prepared. Effects of various conditions were studied. The optimum conditions were molar ratio of d-α-tocopherol to succinate anhydride 1:2, the ratio of n-hexane volume to J-α-tocopherol 2.5 mL/g, the ratio of triethanolamine to d-α-tocopherol 0.06 mL/g, reaction temperature 90℃ and reaction time 4 h. The conversion of J-α-tocopherol was about 96%, and the yield of J-α-tocopherol succinate was about 93%.Then we purified the d-α-tocopheryl succinate through column chromatography. Silica gel column chromatography and macroporous adsorbed resin column chromatography were applied. The optimum conditions of silica gel column chromatography were as follows: chloroform and methanol were used as mobile phases, the load of sample 3 g/40 g silica gel (100-200 mesh), the flow rate 2 mL/min, room temperature, the concentration in the mobile phase 0.38 g/mL. The purity of d -α-tocopheryl succinate increased to 78% from 60% with recovery 90% at optimum conditions. By using macroporous adsorbed resin column chromatography, we chose macroporous adsorbed resin No.9 as solid phase, and methanol was used as mobile phases. The optimum conditions of macroporous adsorbed resin column chromatography were as follows: the flow rate 2 mL/min, temperature 30℃, the load of sample 3 g/100 mL resin, the concentration in the mobile phase 0.25 g/mL. The purity of d -α-tocopheryl succinate increased to more than 85% with recovery more than 90% at optimum conditions.We also studied the crystallization of d -α-tocopheryl succinate including the solvents selection, temperature decreasing rate and so on.