Separation of Nonpolar Lipid from Soybean Oil Deodorizer Distillate by Stirred Batch-Wise Silica Gel Adsorption-Desorption

In this study, the stirred batch-wise adsorption-desorption was employed to separate soybean oil deodorizer distillate (SODD) into a nonpolar lipid fraction (NPLF) and a polar lipid fraction (PLF). Starting with SODD that contains 4.35% fatty acid steryl esters (FASEs), 1.92% squalene, 13.19% tocopherols, and 9.22% free phytosterols, it was possible to obtain NPLF enriched with FASEs (19.5%, recovery 96.93%) and squalene (9.15%, recovery 100%). The contents of FFAs, TAGs, tocopherols, and free phytosterols remained in the NPLF were 11.59%, 1.36%, 4.83%, and 1.45%, respectively. The batch extraction employed in this study yielded about the same degree of separation as compared to that of modified soxhlet extraction. However, the advantage of the method of this study is that it can be scaled-up easily.