Studies on Production of Lipids in Fungi. XVIII.

Supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC) is a new method for analysis, separation and purification. It has the merits of both gas chromatography and liquid chromatography. In the present study, this method was used to separate esterified fatty acids containing lipids in fungi. The characteristics of SFC were compared with those of HPLC in the analysis of the fatty acid. The elution order of each ester was not found to obey the partition number of HPLC, but to depend on the modified partition number defined as (carbon number-2/3 x number of double bond). Further, this relation was affected by temperature, pressure and the addition of methanol.γ-Linolenic acid was present at about 58% in the lipids in the fungi. Operation conditions of SFC were studied for separating γ-linolenic acid from other fatty acids. The former was concentrated from 6% to 9799% by SFC at 35°C and pressures of 100 and 120 kg/cm2.