1. Lactose Fatty Acid Ester Synthesis
Christopher Goh
Cornell University Summer Scholars Program
Dr. Alireza Abbaspourrad
Sponsor: Abbaspourrad Lab; Western NY IFT
8/7/2019
The process of cheesemaking generates an excessive amount of whey, which is
discarded into the environment as waste and contributes to algae blooms. It is imperative to turn
whey into value-added products of the consumer market for food ingredients, personal care,
cosmetics, and pharmaceuticals. This experiment focuses on synthesizing lactose fatty acid
esters using whey permeate powder byproducts, maximizing yield under various conditions, and
determining their performance as biosurfactants. Methods included reacting whey permeate and
fatty acids of different quantities with varying amounts of enzymes, molecular sieves, and
solvents. After whey permeate and fatty acids were mixed together with other reactants, the
reactions were allowed to proceed for five days. Samples were then placed in a vacuum oven to
evaporate the solvent. Solvent extraction was performed with 50/50, v/v ethanol where samples
were placed in a shaking water bath to accelerate the process. Samples subsequently
underwent vacuum filtration and were dried in the vacuum oven. The identity of the final
products was determined via ATR-FTIR and HPLC. For HPLC readings, there was a noticeable
peak that could not be identified; NMR and MS will be run to determine the identity of this peak.
The performance of the products was evaluated by the Rame-hart 500 goniometer for
properties surface tension, interfacial tension, and contact angle. The statistical Student’s t-test
verified that our final products collectively perform significantly different to that of water and
perform similarly to the commercially available surfactant, sodium dodecyl sulfate, for surface
tension measurements only.
