M. Trani et al., ENZYMATIC-SYNTHESIS OF TRIERUCIN FROM HIGH-ERUCIC ACID RAPESEED OIL, Journal of the American Oil Chemists' Society, 70(10), 1993, pp. 961-964
The lipase from Candida rugosa has been shown to discriminate against
erucic acid. Advantage of this property has been taken to produce trie
rucin from high-erucic acid rapeseed (HEAR) oil. A method has been dev
eloped for extracting erucic acid from the oil as dierucin and subsequ
ently enzymatically converting it to trierucin. Unrefined HEAR oil was
hydrolyzed with lipase from C. rugosa to produce a mixture of free fa
tty acids and dierucin. Precipitation and filtration from cold ethanol
gave 73% pure dierucin, free of fatty acids. This dierucin was treate
d in two ways to produce trierucin. First, in the presence of an immob
ilized lipase and a known amount of water, some trierucin is produced
by interesterification. Second, a more efficient route to trierucin ut
ilized Rhizopus arrhizus lipase to completely hydrolyze dierucin to er
ucic acid, which was then combined with an appropriate amount of dieru
cin in the presence of an immobilized lipase to produce trierucin in a
quantitative yield.