Separation and purification of phosphatidylcholine and phosphatidylethanolamine from soybean degummed oil residues by using solvent extraction and column chromatography

Abstract

Natural phosphatidylcholine (PC) and phosphatidylethanolamine (PE) were separated and purified from soybean degummed oil residues in this work. Crude PC and PE were first separated from degummed oil residues by extraction with 95% ethanol, and then the crude PC and PE were used as raw materials to prepare high purity PC and PE by using column chromatography of silica gel (100–200 mesh) with different eluents and elution modes. The high purity PC (content >90%) was obtained from the crude PC by using isocratic elution with methanol as eluent. Compared with the methods reported by using isocratic elution with mixed solvents as eluent or gradient elution, the procedure proposed exhibits low cost and industry potentialities because of some advantages, such as operation simplicity, cheap equipment and solvent to be recovered easily. The purity of the PE product prepared from the crude PE was more than 75%. The gradient elution was preferable to isocratic elution for reducing the elution time and eluent consumption when to prepare PE from the crude PE. The effects of loading amount and the flow-rate on separation efficiency were also investigated. For obtaining high separation efficiency, the loading amount should be less than 2.0 g crude PC or PE/100 g silica gel, and the flow-rate should be controlled under 4 ml/min for crude PC and 3 ml/min for crude PE, respectively.