Preparation of Fatty Acid and Monoglyceride from Vegetable Oil

Fatty acid and monoglyceride are examples of lipid compounds that can be founded in vegetable oils. The fatty acid has an important role in the human diet, lubricants, detergents, cosmetics, plastics, coatings, and resin. Monoglyceride has a wide function in the food industry in particular as natural emulsifier, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, antioxidant, and antibacterial. Therefore, isolation and preparation of fatty acid and monoglyceride are the crucial step. This article focuses on providing the chemical reaction paths of isolation fatty acid and synthesis of monoglyceride from vegetable oils. Fatty acids could be isolated by Colgate-Emery steam hydrolysis, hydrolysis of vegetable oils using inorganic base catalyst or lipase, and base-catalyzed hydrolysis of pure fatty acid methyl ester. There are three steps in the synthesis of pure fatty acid methyl ester which are neutralization, transesterification, and fractional distillation. There are four reactions paths in preparing monoglyceride from vegetable oils. They are glycerolysis, ethanolysis using lipase enzyme (sn-1,3), esterification of fatty acid with glycerol in the presence of inorganic acid catalyst or lipase, transesterification of fatty acid methyl ester with glycerol, transesterification of fatty acid methyl ester with protected glycerol (1,2-O-isopropylidene glycerol), and deprotection using an acid resin (Amberlyst-15).