Isolation of 11-cyclohexylundecanoic acid from butter

Abstract

After fractionation using fractional distillation, recrystallization, urea treatment hydrogenation, and repeated urea treatment, a hitherto unknown acid has been isolated from butter fatty acid methyl esters. Gas–liquid chromatography followed by mass and infrared spectroscopy showed that the acid is saturated and it contains 17 carbon atoms and a terminal cyclohexyl group.Synthetic 1 l-cyclohexylundecanoic acid appeared to be identical with the isolated acid.Butter contains at least 0.01% of this acid.

Keywords

• butter
• 11-cyclohexylundecanoic acid
• isolation
• carbon numbers