Study of purification of fatty acids, tocopherols and sterols from deodorization distillate.

Abstract

The operations to purify deodorizer distillates were studied in this investigation. The purification technology included esterification, two stages of molecular distillation and crystallization. Separation tests by molecular distillation with and without previous esterification of fatty acids were carried out. Esterification gave bigger separation efficiency in all first stage molecular distillation tests. The second stage of molecular distillation allowed increasing concentrations of tocopherols and sterols. Crystallization of the distillated final stream by the second stage of molecular distillation allowed the separation of more than 40 % of sterols, and gave a highly concentrated product (more than 92 % w/w of sterols). The final concentration of tocopherols in two treated samples of sunflower deodorizer distillate was 33.94 % and 20.60 % w/w respectively, and a sample from soy processing gave a value of 56.49 %.