Sucrose fatty acid ester (SE) has high application value in food processing and has good industry development prospects.

Sucrose fatty acid ester (SE) is a non-ionic surfactant, which is a single substance or mixture produced by the esterification reaction of sucrose and fatty acids. It is non-toxic, easily biodegradable and has good surface properties. It is widely used in food, medicine, Daily chemicals, bioengineering enzyme preparations, oil mining, textiles, agriculture and animal husbandry and other industries. Sucrose fatty acid esters have a wide range of applications and benefit from the development of downstream industries, and the industry development prospects are good.

At present, most of the industrial methods are transesterification method, which is divided into solvent method, micro-emulsification method and solvent-free method. The solvents required for solvent production are expensive, flammable and toxic, and the product is not easy to purify, so the process has certain limitations; the micro-emulsification method uses water instead of solvent, which has a lower yield and darker color; solvent-free This method does not use any solvents and directly adds raw materials, catalysts and surfactants. It has the advantages of environmental protection, but has the disadvantages of large dosage of surfactants and low yield.

Most of the sucrose fatty acid esters produced by the above process are crude products, containing impurities such as sucrose, fatty acid potassium, and fatty acids, and cannot meet the needs of high-end fields. The sucrose ester product of just high purity was not obtained, and the crude product still needs to be purified. As a new purification process, the carbon dioxide supercritical washing method has the advantages of simple operation, environmental protection and energy saving. However, it still has shortcomings in industrial application and has not yet been widely used.

Sucrose fatty acid esters are mainly used in the field of food processing as anti-aging agents, anti-dehydration agents, dispersants, foaming agents, lubricants, emulsifiers, solubilizers, and grease substitutes, and have high application value. At present, sucrose fatty acid esters are mainly used in the field of food processing in China, and there is less demand for applications in the fields of medicine, daily chemicals, and feed. There is a lot of room for development in the future.

According to the “China’s sucrose fatty acid ester industry market development status and production and sales data analysis report from 2022 to 2026” released by the Industrial Research Center , compared with Japan, my country’s sucrose fatty acid ester production technology is relatively backward, product quality is poor, production costs are high, and there is considerable room for improvement in the future. At present, domestic sucrose fatty acid ester production companies mainly include Aigefu Food, Ruilin Chemical, Hetang Technology, Qualcomm Food Technology and other companies, with a total production capacity of about 20,000 tons.

Industrial analysts said that sucrose fatty acid esters are not only non-toxic, but also highly biodegradable, so they are widely used in food processing. The application demand is high. In the future, as the quality of domestic sucrose fatty acid ester products is optimized, it will be used in medicine, daily chemicals and other fields, and the market demand will continue to rise. In terms of production, my country’s sucrose fatty acid ester production technology is backward, with low product purity and low yield, resulting in high production costs and limiting industry development. There are few domestic enterprises capable of producing sucrose fatty acid esters, their production capacity is low, and the market is relatively concentrated.