ENZYMATIC HYDROLYSIS OF FREE FATTY ACIDS FROM SHEA BUTTER FOR USE IN COSMETIC INDUSTRY

Abstract

ABSTRACT Shea butter is a good form of vegetable oil extracted from the fruits of shea tree. This research is aimed to hydrolyse free fatty acids from shea butter oil for cosmetic production by extracting shea butter, producing Free fatty acids from shea butter oil through enzymatic hydrolysis and determining the optimum operating conditions. The Shea kernel was transformed into shea butter oil through mechanical screw expression method. Enzymatic hydrolysis of shea butter oil was carried out using lipase as enzyme, this was done by adding 30ml of phosphate buffer solution with a pH of 7.0 and 0.1g of lipase to shea butter oil of 5ml in a conical flask. The solution was stirred using magnetic stirrer and allowed to stay for 15minutes, three (3) distinctive layers were observed and subjected to further analysis. Shea butter was characterized and the results obtained indicated 0.915 Specific Gravity (S.G), 12.44% free fatty acid (FFA), 15.96 Acid Value (AV), 7.46MEq/100g of peroxide value (PV), 189.93 Saponification Value (SV), and 83.39 Iodine Value (IV) Shea butter oil was characterized and result of 50.2% oil yield, 2.64 MEq/100g of peroxide value (PV) and 2.72% of Free Fatty Acid (FFA) were obtained and compared with General Services Administration (GSA) standard of ≥50% oil yield; ≤ 5MEq/100g of PV and ≤ 3% free fatty acid. The optimization of enzymatic hydrolysis of Shea Butter was carried out using DOE 13.2.0 and optimum process parameters of enzyme concentration of 0.40g/mol, temperature of 34.04OC and time of 107 min were obtained and the best optimum value of free fatty acid (FFA) at 56.38%. These process parameters were validated experimentally in the laboratory given the FFA value of 56% with the error of 0.65% which is close to allowable error of 0.5%. The FFA of 56% was further subjected to FT-IR and GC-MS, the result from FTIR shows the functional groups of unsaturated and saturated fatty acids. These functional groups later depicted from the GC-MS to be 45.43% oleic acid (unsaturated) and 53.80% stearic acid (saturated) with traces of 3.36% α- Amyrin acid.