Vegetable lecithins sunflower lecithin

Lecithins are essential components of cell membranes and, in principle, may be obtained from a wide variety of living matter. In practice, however, lecithins are usually obtained from vegetable products such as soybean, peanut, cottonseed, sunflower, rapeseed, corn, or groundnut oils. Soybean lecithin is the most commercially important vegetable lecithin. Lecithin... 

Lecithin could be produced from any crude vegetable oil, but because of the huge quantities of soybean grown and processed, and because of the relatively high percentage of phosphatides in soybean oil, practically in the world soybean oil is the principal commercial source of natural and modified lecithins as well. The world s consumption of lecithin is estimated at 100,000 tons per year. In western Europe 30,000 tons are produced and more than the half of it is applied as modified lecithins / 7. In Hungary sunflower is the major oilseed crop, on this account sunflower lecithin has been the subject of this study. 

Industrial lecithins from a variety of sources ate utilized (Tables 2 and 3). The main sources include vegetable oils (eg, soy bean, cottonseed, corn, sunflower, tapeseed) and animal tissues (egg and bovine brain). However, egg lecithin and in particular soy lecithin (Table 4) ate by fat the most important in terms of quantities produced. So much so that the term soy lecithin and commercial lecithin ate often used synonymously. 

The total commercial lecithin potential if all vegetable oils were degummed worldwide would be 552,000 t (Table 7). Although soybean, sunflower, and rape lecithins are available in the market, the principal commercial interest is only in soybean lecithin. The aimual worldwide production is 130,000 t (Table 8). 

Other somewhat less-rich sources of lecithin are cottonseed, rapeseed and sunflower oils, but palm oil contains very little (Figure 12.31). Soya beans account for over half the world production of all oilseeds and vegetable oils. The United States is the largest soya producer ( 60%) and Brazil the second ( 20%) (Tables 12.44 and 12.45). 

---