Most people are focused on the DHA oil additive to infant formula. So I
thought that in the interest of balanced reporting we should get a birds eye
view of the production of the AA or ARA oils to infant formula. Martek
receives the crude AA or ARA oils from a company called DSM (Dutch State
Mine) company. DSM was once a petroleum company. Interesting how the
petroleum industry seems so involved with matters of infant feeding. Many of
the board members of Agennix (the gmo'd human lactoferrin industry) were once
employed by the petroleum industry. By the way Agennix and DSM are partners
in developing and marketing recombinant human lactoferrin. "It's a small
world after all."
This is patent # 5658767 called "Arachidonic acid and methods for the
production and use thereof" by Kyle with Martek Bioscience being the
assignee. Filed in 1995
The discussion is about the organism M. alpina used in producing the oil. I
find it interesting that they also use acetone (thought that was in nail
polish???). The wonders of food technology...I am reminded of Marie
Antoinette's famous words prior to the French Revolution, "Let them eat
cake." Of course now it would be mycelial cake..with added hexane or
acetone...Valerie W. McClain, IBCLC
"After harvesting, the mycelial cake can be extracted. The mycelial cake
refers to the collection of biomass resulting after harvest. The cake can be
loose or pressed, crumbled or uncrumbled. Optionally, the cake can have any
residual water removed, as by vacuum drying, fluid bed drying, spray drying
or lyophilization, prior to extraction. If this option is selected, it is
preferable to use nonpolar solvents to extract the ARA-containing oil. While
any non-polar extract is suitable, hexane is preferred.
In a preferred embodiment, oil is extracted from the dried biomass by wet
grinding or percolation with virgin hexane. Solvent is usually added at a
solvent-to-biomass ratio of about 5:1 (w/w). After wet grinding, solids are
separated from the extract by decanting or centrifugation. It is advantageous
to maintain the solvent-containing extract (miscella) anaerobically to avoid
oxidation of the unsaturated fatty acid residues in the oil. Miscella is
desolventized to produce a crude fungal oil.
Crude oil extracted from fungal biomass with non-polar solvents can be
cloudy, particularly when the biomass is ground, because grinding may release
fine particles such as cell wall fragments and soluble polysaccharides.
Clarification of such cloudy oil may be accomplished by dissolving the crude
oil in more polar solvents, such as acetone or alcohol. In a preferred
embodiment, crude oil extract of fungal mycelia is further clarified by
acetone extraction/precipitation. An acetone miscella is prepared by adding
acetone to cloudy crude oil extract (preferably to a level of about 20% oil;
i.e., about 4 volumes of acetone per volume of crude oil), mixing thoroughly
and allowing the mixture to stand for a period sufficient for precipitation
of the free particles (usually about an hour room temperature). The
oil-containing acetone miscella is clarified by centrifugation and/or
filtration, and then desolventized to produce acetone-clarified fungal oil.
Acetone-clarified fungal oil is preferred for further processing (e.g.,
degumming, bleaching and deodorizing by conventional techniques) because the
fines produced during extraction of the fungal biomass will interfere with
the refining processes if not removed in the acetone step."
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