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ARS Home » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #95285
Title: CONCENTRATION OF PHYTOSTEROL FOR ANALYSIS BY SUPERCRITICAL FLUID EXTRACTION

Author
item Snyder, Janet
item King, Jerry
item Taylor, Scott
item Neese, Angela

Submitted to: Journal of the American Oil Chemists' Society
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 2/18/1999
Publication Date: N/A
Citation: N/A

Interpretive Summary: Plant sterols are gaining attention from food and drug markets as potential cholesterol-lowering products. The ability to separate and measure the amount of sterols in lipid containing material is important to the pharmaceutical industry and consumers. A process was developed to first remove the major fatty matter and concentrate the sterol compounds. The sterols were then removed and analyzed to identify the individual sterol compounds and determine the concentration of the sterols in each sample. The method utilizes carbon dioxide with a minimum use of solvents and is effective in analyzing the sterol content in a variety of samples.

Technical Abstract: Fractionation of sterols from plant lipid mixtures was accomplished using a multi-step supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) procedure. Samples of seed oils, margarine, corn germ oil and corn fiber oil were extracted to yield enriched phytosterol fractions. Supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC) was utilized to separate and determine the concentration of the plant sterols in the extracts from the various samples. The sterol concentration in the original samples varied from 0.2 wt.% in soybean oil to 13.1 wt.% in oil extracted from corn fiber. After the SFE-based fractionation of the samples, the sterol concentration was increased to 40 wt.% in the extract from soybean oil and 38 wt.% in the extract from corn fiber oil. Oil extracted from corn bran, which measured 8.6 wt.% in the original oil, increased to 70 wt.% using the fractionation process. The benign conditions utilized by SFE and SFC proved to be effective for the analyses of these compounds without inducing degradation of the analytes.