Phosphatidylcholine and its purification from raw de-oiled soya lecithin

In recent years, pharmaceutical and food industries have taken several initiatives in purification of phosphatidylcholine (PC) due to its coveted importance and numerous applications. In the present work, an attempt has been made to maximize purity of PC from de-oiled soya lecithin. The extraction of de-oiled lecithin was carried out using combination of ethanol and isopropyl alcohol in different ratios to increase the purity and the yield of PC. Further, extracted and the dry form of PC was partitioned using various ratios of acetonitrile–hexane and mixture of other solvent systems. The number of equilibrium stages required for the counter current extraction were calculated for both solid–liquid extraction and partitioning. Several solvents and their combinations were tried in order to get maximum purity and the yield of PC. The PC-rich acetonitrile phase was further purified on silica gel (mesh size 100–200) based column chromatography. For column chromatography, the gradient elution was investigated. The purity of PC obtained was in the range of 95–98%.

► Phosphatidylcholine (PC) purity over 85% was achieved just by solvent extraction.
► Alcohol mix as solvent helps in maximizing PC purity and yield.
► L–L partitioning leads to better selectivity for PC over other phospholipids.
► Silica column effectively purified PC to above 98% using simple solvent system.