Caprylic acid derives its vegan and vegetarian status from coconut oil, palm kernel oil.
| Vegan? Yes | Vegetarian? Yes |
Classifications are made based on the available commercial supply of the ingredient, and are made based on the criteria on our classifications page.
Commercially available caprylic acid is vegan and vegetarian.
Caprylic acid, also known as octanoic acid, is a medium chain (C8) fatty acid found in milk, coconut oil, and palm oil. Although it does contain some trace amounts of caprylic acid, animal fat like tallow mostly contains long chain fatty acids and so are not used to commercially produce these short and medium chain fatty acids. It is commercially extracted from coconut or palm kernel oil which is hydrolyzed and then fractionally distilled.
Sources
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caprylic_acid
- Braune, M., Yuan, B., Sträuber, H., McDowall, S. C., Nitzsche, R., & Gröngröft, A. (2021). A Downstream Processing Cascade for Separation of Caproic and Caprylic Acid from Maize Silage-Based Fermentation Broth. Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology, 9.
https://doi.org/10.3389/fbioe.2021.725578 - https://cen.acs.org/materials/biobased-materials/Symrise-launches-biobased-caprylyl-glycol/100/i14
- Khor, W. C., Andersen, S., Vervaeren, H., & Rabaey, K. (2017). Electricity-assisted production of caproic acid from grass. Biotechnology for Biofuels, 10(1).
https://doi.org/10.1186/s13068-017-0863-4