High-Performance Liquid Chromatographic Separation of Structured Lipids Produced by Interesterification of Macadamia Oil with Tributyrin and Tricaprylin

Short and medium-chain triacylglycerols, namely tributyrin (1,2,3-tributyrylglycerol) and tricaprylin (1,2,3-trioctanoylglycerol), were interesterified with macadamia oil using an immobilized lipase as biocatalyst. Both normal phase (silica column; NPSIL) and reverse phase (ODS column) HPLC with evaporative light scattering or mass spectrometric detection were used to separate and identify the newly-synthesized, structured lipid products. The normal phase method separated the structured lipid triacylglycerols on the basis of their regioisomeric-structures. Analysis of the structured triacylglycerols by a non-aqueous, reverse-phase method separated the regioisomeric triacylglycerols based on their total carbon number. From these analyses, it was found that of the triacylglycerol species produced by interesterification of macadamia nut oil with tributyrin or tricaprylin 77.6 and 94.1%, respectively, were structured lipid products.