Abstract
High-purity eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) ethyl ester (EPA-EE) can be produced from an integrated technique consisting of saponification, ethyl esterification, urea complexation, molecular distillation and column separation. In order to improve the purity and inhibit oxidation, tea polyphenol palmitate (TPP) was added before the procedure of ethyl esterification. Furthermore, through the optimization of process parameters, 2:1 (mass ratio of urea to fish oil, g/g), 6 h (crystallization time) and 4:1 (mass ratio of ethyl alcohol to urea, g/g) were found to be the optimum conditions in the procedure of urea complexation. Distillate (fraction collection), 115 °C (distillation temperature) and one stage (the number of stages) were found to be the optimum conditions for the procedure of molecular distillation. With the addition of TPP and the above optimum conditions, high-purity (96.95%) EPA-EE was finally obtained after column separation.