Squalene is a natural lipid belonging to the triterpene hydrocarbon group (2,6,10,15,19,23-hexamethyltetracosa-2,6,10,14,18,22-hexane) with a symmetrical 30-carbon polyprenyl compound and containing six isoprene units. I would like to know the methods of isolation of squalene from plant .
Perhaps this might help:
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jf010918p
Good luck!
you can use the extraction methods by proper solvents using soxhlet apparatus .you can start by ether , THF ,DCM , ethyl acetate , n- hexane or any non polar solvent to get the extracter. then evaporate your sample by freeze drying ( drying under vacuum and cooling). or rotary evaporate.then check your sample with TLC to know the nature of separated molecule. with FT-IR you can identify nature of your sample present.
As I can remember from my PhD work, its a very non polar compound and if the plant contains, it will appear in the hexane extract, and also in the early fractions during the chromatographic separation.
The best method is to extract the fresh or dried plant material with chloroform or dichloromethane. See also our paper on Mercurialis:
Lorenz et al., Phytochem. Anal., 2010, 21, 234–245
Extract your plant sample with hexane and allow the extractives for air drying without using heat drying or steaming. Using hexane as the solvent on vlc for the sample will simply isolate a high yield of squalene.
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