The separation of the reaction products is an important aspect,
which is often afforded less importance. The major products
of an acidolysis reaction are FFAs and TAGs. The separation of
these products is usually carried out by neutralization of FFAs
with a hydroalcoholic solution of KOH or NaOH (forming soaps
soluble in the hydroalcoholic phase) and extraction of TAGs by
hexane [19]. However, this method can give low TAG recovery
yields high amounts of FFAs lead to the formation of many soaps,
in which a considerable proportion of TAGs remains occluded.
In this work the separation of FFAs and TAGs has been tested
by extraction of the former with water–ethanol mixtures. In
this method the most important variable to optimize is the
water/ethanol ratio, which depends on the type of FFAs and TAGs