Monday, May 5, 2008
9-36

Synthesis and Purification of Monoglycerides through Lipase-Catalyzed Glycerolysis and Molecular Distillation

Patricia B. L. Fregolente, Gláucia M. F. Pinto, and Maria Regina Wolf-Maciel. Chemical Engineering School, State University of Campinas, Albert Einstein, 500, Campinas, 13081-970, Brazil

Monoglycerides (MG) and diglycerides (DG) present great importance in the food, cosmetic and pharmaceutical industries. Industrially, the production of MG consists on the glycerolysis reaction, in the presence of inorganic catalysts at high temperatures (above 200°C).  Lipase-catalyzed glycerolysis of oils and fats at atmospheric pressure and lower temperature is believed to be a practical alternative method in the production of commercial MG. This methodology avoids several drawbacks in the products, e.g., low yield, dark color and burnt taste.
To separate the products of the reaction in order to obtain essentially MG, is necessary a distillation process. But ordinary distillation is difficult because the low vapor pressure and thermal instability of the acylglycerols. Instead, molecular distillation is adequate for obtaining a product with high MG concentration.

In this work, MG and DG are produced through lipase-catalyzed glycerolysis of soybean oil using Candida Antarctica B in a solvent-free system.  The determination of the composition of the triglycerides (TG), DG, MG, free fatty acids (FFA) and GL were performed using a high-performance size-exclusion chromatography (HPSEC). After 24 hours of reaction, the mixture of acylglycerols and fatty acids (FFA) was distilled into a centrifugal molecular distiller. Starting from a material with 22.23% of TG, 49.21% of DG, 22.1% of MG, 4.86% of FFA and 1.53% of GL, the maximum MG purity in the distillate stream (MGD) was 65 % at evaporator temperature (TEV) equal to 230 ºC and (feed flow rate) Q equal to 5 mL/min. At these conditions, the MG recovery was 70.63%.


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