Orison Chemicals Limited offer wide range of lecithin products for all types of applications.
Lecithin history:
In 1846, Lecithin was discovered by the French chemist Maurice Gobley. He isolated lecithin substance from egg yolk and called it lecithin after the Greek name for egg-yolk (“lekithos”).
He was also the first to isolate glycerophosphate, a saturated acid (a mixture of heptadecanic, palmitic, and stearic acids) and an unsaturated fatty acid (oleic acid), and nitrogenous compounds from natural substances, which at the time he was not used.
Between 1862 and 1868, C Diakanow and Adolph Strecker were able to identify the nitrogenous compounds discovered by Gobley. In 1862 Strecker, the personal assistant of Justus Liebig, discovered a nitrogenous compound in the gallbladder, which he named choline, which comes from the Greek kbol (bile). Furthermore, these studies show that two fatty acids are linked to glycerophosphate. They also speculated for the first time on phosphoric acid as a link between diglycerides and phosphatidylcholine. Strickel moved from Tiibingen to Wiirzburg at the age of 68, and Prof. Felix Hoppe-Seyler, who was 42 at the time, took over the lecithin research from Strickel.
Between 1850 and 1882 John Lewis William Thudichum carried out detailed studies in the field of brain chemistry, elucidating the structure of many of the brain’s phospholipid compounds [of which kephalin (according to the Greek kephalos = brain), also known and also known as called ethanolamine phospholipids or phosphatidylethanolamine
Thudichum studied at the University of Giessen, under the influence of Justus Liebig, and received his doctorate in 1851. In 1853 he moved to London, where he established a private laboratory. The results of his research were published in English in 1854 and in German in 1901. Thus, he laid the foundations of phospholipid chemistry.
Research by Strickel, Hoppe-Seyler, and Thudichum has inspired many scientists, resulting in numerous current publications. Lecithin is found in all developing cells. It is found in cereals, corn, oat germ, peas, wheat germ, beans. Even in the meat.
Commerical Lecithin
Commercial Lecithin can be obtained in a large scale from: soybeans, sunflower seeds, rapeseed, egg yolks. The main forms of lecithin for industrial use are: liquid (oil), granule, and powder. The liquid concentration is about 60%, and the granule and powder can reach more than 95%.
Production Process
The production of lecithin generally use the following processes:
1) Ethanol extraction: The principle is that lecithin is soluble in ethanol, and other phospholipids: cephalin and inositol phospholipids are insoluble in ethanol.
2) Layer-column analysis: the principle is that the adsorbents have different adsorption capacities for cephalin, inositol phospholipid, and lecithin.
3) Co2 supercritical extraction: The principle is the abnormal balance behavior and transfer performance of supercritical Co2 and lecithin. The different components are separated under varying temperature and pressure.
4) Membrane separation method: the principle is to use different lecithin, cephalin, and inositol phospholipids to form different molecular masses in different solvents for separation, such as using a phospholipid solution dissolved in a mixed solution of ethane-isopropanol to pass through a polypropylene semi-permeable membrane , can increase the lecithin content from 25% to 51%, and recover the solution flowing through the membrane and recover it, which can greatly improve the purity of lecithin.