Effect of degumming reagents on the recovery and nature of lecithins from crude canola, soybean and sunflower oils

Abstract

AbstractSix reagents (water, citric acid, phosphoric acid, oxalic acid, acetic anhydride and maleic anhydride) were evaluated for their effectiveness in degumming three crude vegetable oils (canola, soybean and sunflower). All chemical reagents tested were found to be significantly more effective than water in removing lecithin material from all three oils except for acetic anhydride degumming of canola. Citric and phosphoric acids were found to be very effective in reducing phosphorus levels in canola oil (91 and 93% removal, respectively). For soybean oil, all reagents except water showed excellent degumming ability by removing 98% phosphorus, while in the case of sunflower oil, maleic anhydride and oxalic acid produced the highest level of phosphorus removal (95 and 90%, respectively). Both citric acid and acetic anhydride were effective in removing Fe from all three oils during degumming (84 to 94%), while phosphoric acid showed slightly lower values (73 to 87%).No significant changes in the phospholipid composition or fatty acid profiles of the phospholipid classes were observed as a result of degumming with the various chemical reagents. In general, canola phospholipids were lowest in palmitic, stearic and linoleic acid and contained the highest levels of oleic acid when compared to soybean and sunflower phospholipids. Both citric and acetic anhydride were found to influence the removal of an unknown glycolipid significantly. Canola lecithin was shown to contain a greater amount of glycolipids than sunflower and soybean lecithins.