jenijjun
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Hexane extraction
I'm interested in extraction of fat soluble vitamins and other compounds from mold infested peanuts.
These peanuts have some sort of mold that produces mycotoxins, either aspergillius or penicillium. So possible mycotoxins are aflatoxins and
ochratoxin.
However these mycotoxins are insoluble in aprotic non polar solvents like n-hexane, whereas the desired product is.
So the steps for this would be extraction with very pure hexane, filtration through 0,2 micron filter and then evaporation to get the desired mix of
products.
Is this safe for human consumption? I'd love to hear what you think about it.
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macckone
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This forum is more oriented towards chemistry than making food grade products.
While hypothetically hexane would work, you aren't certain of the mold and there could be more than one type lurking.
Fresh peanuts are going to cost less than the food grade n-hexane.
Get fresh ones and avoid poisoning yourself or others.
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jenijjun
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Quote: Originally posted by macckone  | This forum is more oriented towards chemistry than making food grade products.
While hypothetically hexane would work, you aren't certain of the mold and there could be more than one type lurking.
Fresh peanuts are going to cost less than the food grade n-hexane.
Get fresh ones and avoid poisoning yourself or others. |
Thank you you answer. I forgot to add the question because of which I'm posting it here, lol. That was which solvent should be used. (Could be butane
more suitable for this?)
As for mold types, it's blue mold and under microscope it looks like there's only this one type of mold. I'll test it properly when I get to the lab,
but due to the ongoing pandemic it's rather tricky.
I'm just trying to find new possibilities of what to do with seemingly unsuable things, the cost is not an issue here.
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draculic acid69
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Why is using mold infested peanuts rather than fresh ones an option?
Is there a thing in this specific mold that isn't in nonmoldy ones
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Dr.Bob
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My guess is that they are a cheap source of starting materials. Recovering value from waste is a useful way to save materials.
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jenijjun
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Yes, you are partly correct. I have at my disposal large quantities and otherwise this material would have to be destroyed. So I thought it could be
an good idea to make something useful from that/use it in further synthesis.
I have the means to do an extraction using highly pure butane gas (safely), what are your thoughts on that?
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Tsjerk
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If hexane works, butane should work as well I guess.
About the human consumption I would be careful. Besides the mycotoxins there could be a ton of other things coming over, and how are you going to test
for something unknown?
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Metacelsus
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I think the only useful thing that can be done with those peanuts is to use them as fuel. As others have said, don't risk poisoning anyone.
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unionised
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Butane will extract the oil/fat from the nuts.
There's a lot of fat in peanuts- about 50%. So you would end up trying to extract useful stuff from peanut oil. That's going to be hard.
You could transesterify that oil to biodiesel or saponify it to soap.
The conditions for those reactions would (I think) destroy the mycotoxins.
Essentially, are you going to label your product as "Made from stuff that wasn't fit to eat", or are you going to mislead your customers?
[Edited on 27-8-20 by unionised]
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