High-efficiency recovery technology for vitamin E
 Vitamin E, tocotrienol and tocopherol, has received much attention as bioactive compound to provide a health benefit, such as antioxidant activities, cholesterol lowering, anti-cancer effects and protection against atherosclerosis. Especially, tocotrienol having much higher activity than tocopherol is containing at low concentration in oils extracted from a few plants such as palm and rice bran. At present, tests are being conducted using a technique for separating and recovering vitamin E from these oils using multi-stage molecular distillation at 100?250°C, and chromatographic separation. However, substances in the vitamin E group have low thermal stability, and are susceptible to thermal denaturation. As a result, low recovery rates are a problem with the above method.
In this research, we propose an adsorption/desorption method using ion-exchange resin, as a new recovery technique which does not involve a molecular distillation step. With this technology, it is possible to selectively recover vitamin E under mild conditions of ordinary atmospheric pressure and temperature, and then achieve recovery at high concentration by supplying supernatant. We have already achieved recovery rates of 80% or more, which are two or more times higher than the conventional method. At present, we are working to develop a simultaneous manufacturing process for biodiesel fuel and vitamin E using oily biomass as a raw material.
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