Development of Rationally Designed Polymer for Extraction and Purification of physiologically active components from Vegetable Oils

Vegetable oils are among the most common topics of many recent studies. This is because they are important constituents of the human diet and a major source of edible lipids. Moreover, vegetable oils such as soybean, sunflower and palm oils are typical raw materials used for the production of biodiesel. Chapter 1 presents an introduction to the physiologically-active compounds in some vegetable oils in terms of their importance and their available extraction methods from edible oils. Chapter 2 displays a development of a rationally designed polymer (RDP) that had an affinity towards a group of minor components. RDP has several advantages over commercial sorbents that make it suitable for analytical and industrial applications. It has a low cost, potential group-specificity towards the compounds that share some common functionalities, and compatibility with mass-manufacturing and high stability. Chapter 3 shows a study to develop the rationally designed polymer (RDP) for the extraction and purification of a group of minor components including free fatty acids, α-tocopherol and some phytosterols, from a range of oils including sunflower oil, palm oil, wheat germ oil, olive oil, sesame oil and soybean oil in a single step without any additional pre-treatment with an environmentally-friendly process. Chapter 4 includes a comparison of the developed RDP and several commercially available resins in relation to the retention and recovery of the compounds of interest. The comparison has shown the superiority of RDP to extract the group of minor components from 20% sunflower oil in heptane with the minimum use of organic solvents. Chapter 5 also includes a comparison between the RDP and tocopherol-specific MIPs and magnetic molecularly imprinted nanoparticles (MIP NPs), in terms of the advantages of each material for particular separation and purification. MIP and MIP NP have shown an affinity towards -tocopherol; however, the RDP extracted not only α-tocopherol but also other minor compounds in a higher concentration under the mild conditions of SPE.