Separation of synthetic wax components by Temperature Rising Elution Fractionation (TREF)

Abstract

TREF (Temperature Rising Elution Fractionation) was applied to study the separation of wax components. Five long chain esters were synthesized from a fatty alcohol (stearyl alcohol) and fatty acids (decanoic acid, palmitic acid, stearic acid, oleic acid and linolaic acid). Thermal property, morphology and solubility of the esters were studied in order to select the suitable esters to make the synthetic wax for this separation technique. The mixture of equal amounts of stearyl oleate, stearyl palmitate and stearyl decanoate was used as the synthetic wax in this work. A number of factors affecting the separation by TREF technique including solvent (n-hexane, isopropanol and mixed hexane and isopropanol 1:1), inert support (510 µm, 710 µm and without inert support) and temperature profile were studied. The components of the synthetic wax were successfully separated by TREF using isopropanol as the solvent, 510 µm sand as the inert support at 10 °C, 30 °C and 50 °C