Process for purification of phospholipids
AssigneeAir Products and Chemicals, Inc.
InventorsJohn J. Kearns, Paul A. Tremblay, Raymond J. Robey, Swaminathan Sunder
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Abstract
A process for the separation and purification of individual phospholipids, especially phosphatidylcholine or lecithin and phosphatidylethanolamine, from mixtures containing members of the sub-class of phosphatides, incorporating methods of solvent extraction appropriate to the scale of the sample and utilizing an acetonitrile, acetonitrile-hydrocarbon, or acetonitrile-fluorocarbon solvent, which exhibit differential solubility properties towards the individual phospholipids.
Claims4
A process for purifying individual phospholipids from mixtures thereof by separating phosphatidylcholines from the phospholipid mixtures, which comprises:
- (a) extracting phospholipids from egg yolks with acetonitrile;
- (b) evaporating from about 75 to about 95% of the acetonitrile to produce an oiled-out fraction, which fraction is removed from the remaining acetonitrile;
- and
- (c) extracting the oiled-out fraction with supercritical CO.sub.2.
A process for purifying individual phospholipids from mixtures thereof by separating phosphatidylcholines from the phospholipid mixtures, which comprises:
- (a) extracting egg yolks with supercritical CO.sub.2 to form a residue;
- (b) extracting phospholipids from the residue with an organic solvent pair selected from the group consisting of chloroform-methanol, methylene chloride-methanol, methylene chloride-ethanol, hexane-methanol, hexane-ethanol, trichlorofluoromethane-ethanol and ethanol-diethyl ether;
- (c) adding water to the extract step (b) to form a biphasic system;
- (d) collecting the organic phase of the biphasic system and evaporating the organic solvent to form a residue;
- (e) dissolving the residue of step (d) in hexane;
- (f) extracting the hexane solution with acetonitrile;
- and
- (g) evaporating from about 75 to about 95% of the acetonitrile to produce an oiled-out fraction, which fraction is removed from the remaining acetonitrile.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.