Extraction and separation of unsaturated fatty acids from sunflower oil

Abstract In this paper, natural sunflower seed oil was used as the raw material to extract mixed fatty acids with potassium hydroxide-methyl alcohol solution, and then benzene and methanol were added for methylation reaction, and finally the saturated and unsaturated fatty acid methyl ester were separated by urea encapsulation method. The optimal reaction temperature of the mixed fatty acid extraction process, the optimal dosage ratio of urea to mixed fatty acid methyl ester and the optimal freezing temperature in the urea encapsulation process were explored. Fourier transform infrared spectrometer (FT-IR) and GC-MS were used to analyze. The results show that after methyl esterification of the extracted fatty acids, the separation efficiency of the saturated fatty acid methyl esters by the urea encapsulation method was extremely high, and the content of the unsaturated fatty acid methyl ester in the filtrate was up to 99.67%, which made a solid foundation for further demethylation to prepare unsaturated fatty acids.