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 matrioces. The system consists of an extraction step sequenced on-line with a sorbent filled column, wich permits a SFE-enriched tocoppherol fraction to be diverted onto the chromatographic column for further enrichment of the tocopherols. For the SFE stage the tocopherol enrichment was oprimized at 25 MPa and 80 °C for spybean flakes and rice bran. However, total tocopherol recovery and enrichment was also found to be a critical function of the mass ratio CO2/seed charge. Approximately 60% of the available tocopherols in spyflakes can be recovered in the SFE step, yielding enrichment factors of 1.83-4.33 for the four tocfopherol pecies found in soybean oil. Additional enrichment species can be realized in the SFC stage, ranging from 30.8 for delta tocopherol to 2.41 for beta tocopherol.