Production of phytosterols mix from palm fatty acid distillate (PFAD) through multi-staged extraction processes

Phytosterols is one of bio-active compounds that naturally present in vegetable oils and its by-products or derivatives. The source of phytosterols can be in the form of by-product that generated during the extraction of vitamin E and in this study known as phytosterols resources (PSR). Vitamin E (tocopherols and tocotrienols) extracted from the palm fatty acid distillate (PFAD) produces solid by-product containing 2–4% (w/w) sterols. However, there are no suitable extraction and purification processes developed to exploit these compounds. Therefore, the extraction of phytosterols from PFAD by-product in a mini-pilot scale involving multistage extraction processes, which are solid-liquid extraction, saponification, liquid-liquid extraction and crystallization was developed. Phytosterols was recovered from the extraction and purification processes were of more than 80% purity and 80% yield, composed of ☐-sitosterol (21-22%), campesterol (13-20%) and stigmasterol (59–64%). In conclusion, this extraction process is technically feasible to extract and produce crude phytosterols from a byproduct of the PFAD processing.