However, since the amount of bleaching earth was very small (1.5 mass units per 100 mass units of crude RBO), the percentage of this phytochemical retained in this residue was also very small. Among the main products and residues, the largest tocopherol amount, ca. 65%, was found in refined RBO. In addition, the largest tocopherol concentration, by far, was that found in the deodorisation distillate (576 mg 100 g−1). As deduced from Table 1, in comparison to crude RBO (data from Pestana et al. (2008)), tocopherols are concentrated by a factor of ca. 22 times that in the deodorisation distillate. For this reason, and in spite of the

small amount of this residue U0126 molecular weight (only 0.3 mass units per 100 mass units of crude RBO), tocopherols in the deodorisation distillate represented ca. 7% of the tocopherol distribution. Thus, deodorisation distillate could be of interest for tocopherol recovery. Concentration of tocopherols in the deodorisation distillate has also been observed

by other authors, and should be attributed to volatilization of these phytochemicals at high temperatures (Hoed et al., 2006). Soon-Nam, Sun-Mi, and In-Hwan (2008) found 1490 mg 100 g−1 of tocopherols in the deodorisation distillate of RBO. These authors also recovered tocopherols with acetonitrile at −20 °C, obtaining an extract with 2140 mg 100 g−1. Hoed et al. (2006) found 1100 mg 100 g−1 of tocopherols in the deodorisation distillate of RBO. The large differences of total tocopherol contents in the deodorisation distillate found in this work (576 mg 100 g−1), and in other literature reports, may be related to KU-57788 mouse Casein kinase 1 both natural variations of the phytochemical contents in crude RBO, and the different industrial conditions used during deodorisation.

It is interesting to observe that soap, which retained most of the γ-oryzanol (95.3% of the total amount found in crude RBO), dragged only moderate percentages of tocopherols (ca. 13%). Thus, tocopherols are less soluble in the soap than is γ-oryzanol, and probably also less prone to form mixed micelles or emulsions with the neutral oil and the fatty acid sodium salts than is γ-oryzanol. Most tocopherols were thus retained in the clarified RBO (ca. 86%). From this intermediate, ca. 7% was concentrated in the deodorisation distillate, but most of it reached the refined RBO (ca. 65%). The contents of phytochemicals in the soap hydrolysate (intermediate product), and in the residues obtained during fatty acid recovery from soap, are shown in Table 2. Owing to the reduction of the total mass by removing water and hydrosoluble materials (as glycerol), soap hydrolysis allowed the γ-oryzanol concentration to increase from 14.2 to 27.3 mg g−1. However, ca. 60% of the γ-oryzanol precipitated with soap was lost during soap hydrolysis with HCl at 220 °C for 6 h.