Vitamin E processed using methylation of non-α-tocopherol

Vitamin E is a group of naturally-occurring compounds often chemically elucidated as a series of homologues mainly consisting sting of α− β−, γ− and δ− tocopherols. All of those compounds show the biological function of tocopherd while α-tocopherol exhibits the strongest. To improve its biological function, non-α-tocopherol can be successfully converted into α-tocopherol by methylation. A novel process was developed to efficiently convert non-α-tocopherol (in this case γ-tocopherol) into α-tocopherol by methylolation-reduction. The conversion was confirmed by NMR-H(nuclear magnetic resonance-H) spectroscopy on the final product and the reactants. The NMR-H analysis of the material and specific product contents shows that the non-α-tocopherol methylation of mixture of all four tocopherols proceeds as expected with no intermediate materials remaining in the product.