Hi!
I'm researching on extracting Gossypol from cottonseed oil. It is an antioxidative pigment that is found only in cottonseed oil and helps to store the biodiesel for a longer time if added to the biodiesl.

Question:
Right now, I'm trying to isolate the pigment from the oil using water- ethanol mixtures. Is there an another/ better way to do this?

Choices:
Maybe some flocculant
any other

 

quote:

Originally posted by Blur:
Hi!
I'm researching on extracting Gossypol from cottonseed oil. It is an antioxidative pigment that is found only in cottonseed oil and helps to store the biodiesel for a longer time if added to the biodiesl.

Gossypol is normally removed in the solvent extraction plant by a process known as miscella refining.
Miscella reining typically involves a sodium hydroxide neutralisation step which is performed immediately after the miscella (hexane oil mixture) leaves the extractor and before any heat is applied to recover the hexane. The gossypol is spun out with the neutralised FFAs in the form of soapstock. This is typically dumped into the meal desolventiser where it ends up in the meal residue and typically ends up as animal feeds etc.

The problem with gossypol is that if it is not removed at this early stage then the pigment will cause the oil (and subsequent biodiesel) to be very dark. Thereofre there is pretty much no gossypol in commercially extracted cottonseed oil. There will be some gossypol in screw pressed oil but not really sure how you would go about isolating it. Commercially pressed oil would typically be neutralised with sodium hydroxide on site and so again I would assume there would be very little in commercially supplied oils.

I have not heard of anyone tryong to isolate and remove the gossypol to then add it back to biodiesel later.

Dude,
Thanks a lot, man. We just started work on this project and this is what the client wants us to look into. But I'm looking up some papers on this subject.
Thanks again.