Analysis of Vitamin E in a Commercial Supplement by Offline SFE-SFC-PDA

Vitamin E, also called tocopherol, is a fat-soluble vitamin and an important chemical substance that exhibits an antioxidant effect, particularly in the human body. There are four tocopherols (α, β, γ and δ) that differ based on the number and position of methyl groups. The α-tocopherol exhibits the strongest antioxidant activity, and this is the tocopherol form found in most commercial supplements as vitamin E. Since it is highly fat-soluble, a quick and simple extraction method using supercritical fluid is expected to be applicable.In this article, we introduce a procedure for α-tocopherol pretreatment that uses supercritical fluid extraction (SFE).