Abstract
It is highly desirable that efficient recoverable heterogeneous catalysts should be developed to replace the costly biocatalysts used in producing structured phospholipids (SPLs) with medium-chain fatty acids (MCFAs). Thus, mesoporous propyl and phenyl sulfonic acid-functionalized SBA-15 materials synthesized via surface modification methods were investigated for the soybean lecithin interesterification with methyl caprate or caprylate. The physicochemical properties of the synthesized solid acids were deeply studied by small-angle X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, Fourier transform infrared and pyridine adsorption, etc. to build the possible structure–performance relationships. The results revealed that amounts of organosulfonic acid groups were successfully grafted onto the SBA-15 support, and most of the surface acid sites contained in the as-prepared organic–inorganic hybrid samples were assigned as strong Brӧnsted acid sites. Notably, the functionalized SBA-15 materials exhibited promising catalytic behaviors in producing MCFA-enriched SPLs under mild conditions (40 °C, 6 h) when compared with commercial Amberlyst-15 and typical phospholipases or lipases, mostly due to their high surface area, ordered structure and adequate Brӧnsted acid sites. Besides, the as-prepared materials could be easily recycled five times without obvious deactivation. This work might shed light on alternative catalysts for SPL production instead of the costly enzymes.
Highlights
At present, great efforts have been devoted to the catalytic production of structured lipids (SLs) from natural vegetable oils and/or phospholipids (PLs) to meet the increasing demands for high-valued chemicals, pharmaceuticals and nutraceuticals, etc. [1,2,3,4]
The meso-Ph-SO3 H-SBA-15 catalyst with more Brönsted acid sites exhibited the higher reactivities, which could support the aforementioned hypothesis. These results indicated that the strong acidities in the two SBA-15 solid acids and their ordered mesostructure natures as well could improve the accessibility of reactants to the active sites, resulting in the satisfactory catalytic behavior in the soybean lecithin (SL) interesterification reactions [39]
This work thoroughly studied the production of medium-chain structured phospholipids (SPLs) by SL interesterification over two mesoporous organosulfonic acid-functionalized SBA-15 catalysts
Summary
Great efforts have been devoted to the catalytic production of structured lipids (SLs) from natural vegetable oils and/or phospholipids (PLs) to meet the increasing demands for high-valued chemicals, pharmaceuticals and nutraceuticals, etc. [1,2,3,4]. Great efforts have been devoted to the catalytic production of structured lipids (SLs) from natural vegetable oils and/or phospholipids (PLs) to meet the increasing demands for high-valued chemicals, pharmaceuticals and nutraceuticals, etc. Structured phospholipids (SPLs), known as efficient emulsifiers considering their surfactant properties, have achieved extensive attention owing to their versatile applications in fine chemical, pharmaceutical, cosmetic and food industries, etc. MCFA-enriched SPLs could be utilized as healthy functional lipids for medical and food applications due to their lower. The increasing requirements for MCFA-enriched SPLs might greatly stimulate their large-scale production, which could present a remarkable challenge for academic research and industry
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