Supercritical CO2 extraction and concentration of n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid ethyl esters from tuna cooking juice

Abstract

Cooking is an important step in the tuna canning process; it usually produces functional solubilized proteins and lipids. The objective of this study was to recover and increase the concentration of functional n−3 fatty acids from the lipids in cooking juice. The lipids contained 12.98% eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) after ethyl esterification and increased to 37.4% with subsequent urea adduct fractionation. Supercritical carbon dioxide extraction was further used to increase the concentration of EPA and DHA ethyl esters. The ratio of EPA+DHA ethyl esters (high-molecular-weight components) to that of C16 and C18∶1 fatty acid ethyl esters (low-molecular-weight components) was used as a separation index for evaluating the process variables. Experimental results indicated that a high CO2 density caused a low separation factor. At 1500 psig and 328.2 K, the extraction collected over 600 L CO2, displaying an accepted concentration factor of EPA+DHA ethyl esters herein. About 80% yield of EPA and DHA was obtained and the ethyl esters increased from 37.4% to 54.3%.