ENZYMATIC-SYNTHESIS OF TRIERUCIN FROM HIGH-ERUCIC ACID RAPESEED OIL

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.