Chemometric analysis of tocopherols content in soybean oil obtained by supercritical CO2

The objective of this work was to evaluate the concentration of tocopherol isomers in different fractions of soybean oil obtained at different extraction process conditions. GC–MS analysis shown that the total content of tocopherols in the collected fractions were in the range from 31.74 to 1410.55 mg total tocopherols/kg of extract, depending on investigated extraction conditions. By selecting the relevant process conditions of supercritical extraction, as well as by fractionation, it is possible to obtain soybean oil with different mass concentrations of tocopherols.Chemometric analysis was applied on different tocopherols isomers to model the relationships between the contents of different tocopherols isomers in soybean oil. The linear regression method was used to derive the significant models for predicting the tocopherols contents. To confirm the predictive power of the models, predicted contents of total tocopherols were calculated by using derived models and compared with the experimental values. High agreement between experimental and predicted values, obtained in the validation procedure, indicated the good quality of the models.

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► Fractionation of tocopherols using supercritical carbon dioxide.
► GC–MS analysis of tocopherols (from 31 to 1410 mg tocopherols/kg of extract).
► Chemometric analysis of different tocopherols isomers.
► Model of relationships between the contents of different tocopherols in oil.