Preparation of eicosapentaenoic acid ethyl ester from fish oil ethyl esters by continuous batch chromatography

Fish oils are rich in eicosapentaenoic acid, which has the wide-ranging biological activities. The rapid and efficient separation of eicosapentaenoic acid ethyl ester from fish oils ethyl ester is still regarded as a challenge. In this study, we described an effective and flexible chromatography for eicosapentaenoic acid ethyl ester preparation, named continuous batch chromatography, which combined the batch chromatography with the continuous chromatographic operation mode. After continuous batch chromatography experiment, the recovery of eicosapentaenoic acid ethyl ester was 82.01%, the average relative purity and the relative highest purity of eicosapentaenoic acid ethyl ester were 97.82 and 98.98%. The productivity of continuous batch chromatography was 5.48 times higher than that of batch chromatography, while the solvent consumption of eicosapentaenoic acid ethyl ester was 78% of the batch chromatography. This study provided a reference for the separation of the targeted chemical component from multi-component mixtures.