1989 Volume 15 Issue 3 Pages 439-445
Supercritical carbon dioxide (SC-CO2) fractionation of fatty acid ethyl esters (FA) derived from fish oil is carried out, using a packed column of 20mm internal diameter and 2.5m total packed height. While the SC-CO2 phase saturated by a FA mixture flows upward through the column, solutes rich in the heavier components condense because of the longitudinal temperature increase of the column and trickle down countercurrently to the SC-CO2 phase. This rectification effect promotes the separation efficiency greatly and results in eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) or docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) purity of over 90wt% with about 40% yield, although the purity depends on the content of other components which have the same carbon number as EPA or DHA. Fractionation curves obtained in this work, however, indicate the possibility of the separation of such components only by SC-CO2 fractionation.
