Obtenção de concentrados de monoacilgliceróis a partir do óleo de girassol

Abstract

Monoacylglycerols (MAG) are emulsifiers used in food, pharmaceutical and cosmetic products. MAG obtained from vegetable oils has been emphasizing to industrial processes due to the benefits that these natural compounds bring to human health. Industrially, these are produced by chemical glycerolysis of triacylglycerols (TAG), generating about 40 to 50% of MAG. For some applications, it is necessary to concentrate it and the process of molecular distillation is attractive because it enables the concentration of thermally sensitive compounds and does not use solvents. This work was carried out to study the chemical glycerolysis of sunflower (Helianthus annus), which is notable for being rich in linoleic acid (ω-6 family). After reaction, the MAG obtained was concentrated by molecular distillation. Two falling film molecular distillers were used (POPE and UIC-GmbH), emphasizing this last one by better operating conditions for the study of concentration of MAG. The technique of experimental design was used to study the factors involved in MAG production and concentration. Thus, under optimized conditions, the chemistry glycerolysis obtain 48.3% of MAG, 42.3% diacylglycerols (DAG), 6.9% of TAG and 2.8% of glycerol (GL). Firstly, the molecular distillation process was conducted to remove the GL in the distillate stream, the residue stream (rich in acylglycerols) was feed to a second molecular distillation, to increase the MAG concentration. In the first distillation, at 90°C of evaporator temperature (TEV), 99.5% from GL was removed. In the second molecular distillation, MAG was concentrated at 82.6% in the distillate stream, under 170 °C of TEV. Both, the vegetable oil and the mixture of acylglycerols (from glycerolysis) and the MAG concentrate were characterized by physicochemical methods, with sunflower oil as reference. Following these characteristics of identity and quality, the results were inside the standards (ANVISA and CODEX). It is important to stand out that the unsaturated fatty acids were not changed during the process of obtaining and concentration of MAG showing acceptable quality characteristics for use it as an emulsifier. The agitated falling film molecular distillation (UIC-GmbH) was a great alternative to the concentration of thermally degradable MAG. Therefore, under these studied conditions, the chemical glycerolysis and the molecular distillation proved itself as a viable process for obtaining concentrated natural emulsifiers.