Refining oil compositions
AssigneeNorsk Hydro a.s.
InventorsHarald Breivik, Gudmundur G. Haraldsson
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Abstract
This invention relates to a process for treating an oil composition containing saturated and unsaturated fatty acids in the form of triglycerides, with at least some of the unsaturated fatty acids being polyunsaturated, in order to obtain a refined product with a higher concentration of the polyunsaturated fatty acids.
Claims29
A process for treating an oil composition containing saturated, monounsaturated, and polyunsaturated fatty acids in the form of triglycerides, in order to obtain a refined product having a higher concentration of polyunsaturated fatty acids, which process comprises:
- (a) subjecting the oil composition to a transesterification reaction with a C.sub.1 -C.sub.6 alcohol under substantially anhydrous conditions and in the presence of a lipase to catalyze the transesterification of saturated and monounsaturated fatty acids more so than polyunsaturated fatty acids, the amount of water present in the reaction mixture being less than one weight percent and the amount of said C.sub.1 -C.sub.6 alcohol present in the reaction mixture being not more than 15 molar equivalents based on the triglycerides present, so as to obtain a mixture of glyceride esters and alcohol esters;
- (b) separating from said mixture a fraction containing esters of said C.sub.1 -C.sub.6 alcohol with saturated and monounsaturated fatty acids produced by said lipase-catalyzed transesterification reaction;
- and
- (c) recovering as a residual glyceride fraction a refined oil product having a higher concentration of polyunsaturated fatty acids than said starting oil composition.
A process for the removal of environmental pollutants from an oil composition containing one or more such pollutants in admixture with saturated, monounsaturated, and polyunsaturated fatty acids in the form of triglycerides, which process comprises the steps of:
- (a) subjecting the oil composition to a transesterification reaction with a C.sub.1 -C.sub.6 alcohol under substantially anhydrous conditions and in the presence of a lipase to catalyze the transesterification of saturated and monounsaturated fatty acids more so than polyunsaturated fatty acids, the amount of water present in the reaction mixture being less than one weight percent and the amount of said C.sub.1 -C.sub.6 alcohol present in the reaction mixture being not more than 15 molar equivalents based on the triglycerides present, so as to obtain a mixture of glyceride esters and alcohol esters;
- (b) subjecting the mixture obtained in step (a) to one or more molecular distillations to distill off an alcohol ester fraction containing some amount of said environmental pollutant or pollutants;
- and
- (c) recovering as a residual glyceride fraction an oil product having a lower concentration of environmental pollutants than said starting oil composition.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.