Production of Tocopherol Concentrate by Supercritical Fluid Extraction and Chromatography.

Supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) has been combined with supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC) in a preparative mode to develop a system for fractionating and enriching high value constituents contained in seed oil matrices. The system consists of an extraction step sequenced on-line with a sorbent filled column, which permits a SFE-enriched tocopherol fraction to be diverted onto the chromatographic column for further enrichment of the tocopherols. For the SFE stage, the tocopherol enrichment was optimized at 25 MPa and 80°C for soybean flakes and rice bran. However, total tocopherol recovery and enrichment was also found to be a critical function of the mass ratio of COJseed charge. Approximately 60% of the available tocopherols in soyflakes can be recovered in the SFE step, yielding enrichment factors of 1.83-4.33 for the four tocopherol species found in soy- bean oil. Additional enrichment of tocopherol species can be realized in the SFC stage, ranging from 30.8 for delta-tocopherol to 2.41 for beta-tocopherol.