Phosphorylated Natural Oils

Phospholipids and other lipids are found in most natural oils. Only soya bean products (and to an extent cottonseed and sunflower oils) contain sufficient quantities (as lecithin) to be important practical sources of phospholipids (see above). 

The artificial phosphorylation of these and other natural products such as rapeseed oil, olive oil, linseed oil, and so on and its consequent effects on their properties, appears to have received limited attention. No very useful phosphorylated products have gained the limelight, but it is known that phosphorylation of soya protein leads to an increase of emulsifying power [33]. For some purposes, phospholipids are deliberately removed from vegetable oils, however, by degumming processes. This is to prevent sedimentation, off-taste development and other undesirable properties from developing. 

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Microwave heating has also been applied in the solvent-free phosphorylation of microcrystalline cellulose (Gospodinova et al., 2002). In the isolation step of this procedure, only water and ethanol were used as additional solvents. Wax esters have been produced from vegetable oils using a solvent-free enzymatic process (Petersson et al, 2005) this is particularly noteworthy as enzymes are often intolerant to high concentrations of substrates. The examples of solvent-free procedures described here show that solvents are not always required in the transformation of naturally sourced biopolymers and also in the chemistry of small molecules that can be obtained from a biorefinery. 

Phospholipids from plant sources are obtained on the industrial scale almost exclusively as a by-product of crude oil rehning (see Section 5.4.2). Naturally, the production of high-quality soy lecithin is much lower than needed therefore, it is sometimes mixed with other raw materials. The most suitable lecithin substitute is produced by phosphorylation of a mixture of diacylglycerols and monoacylglycerols. It is stiU better to use diacylglycerols, obtained by removal of monoacylglycerols, and the neutralization of the phosphorylated product with ammonia (Ranny et al., 1976). 

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