Isolation and recovery of phytonutrients in palm by isocrated and isobaric flash chromatography

The phytonutrients (carotenes,tocols,squalene and sterols) present in crude palm oil (cpo) are still intact after the cpo has been converted to palm oil methyl esters (pome),which is used as biodiesel. isolation and recovery of these valuable phytonutrients from pome was carried out prior to the pome being burnt as fuel. this study reports on the isolation and recovery of palm phytonutrients using flash chromatography. flash chromatography was conducted under isocratic and isobaric conditions in which the composition of the mobile phase as well as the pressure is made constant during the run. the elution of the phytonutrients from the stationary phase followed the order of: squalene,carotenes,tocols and last of all,sterols. under the isocractic and isobaric conditions,four fractions were collected from the flash chromatograph. squalene was concentrated by five-fold in fraction one while fraction two consists of ca. 95% carotenes. fractions three and four consist of tocols and sterols respectively. the combination of mobile and stationary phase used in this study is found to be able to isolate and recover carotenes in high purity and yield.