The invention relates to a method for extracting long-chain fatty alcohol from residual oil produced by vitamin E, and belongs to the technical field of separation and extraction in biological engineering, the method comprises the following steps of: using the residual oil produced by vitamin E as a raw material, adding a certain amount of organic solvent and strong alkali for heating saponification, neutralizing the saponification solution, extracting solid phytosterol, adsorbing and separating the extracted solution by using strong alkali type anionic resin to prepare a long-chain fatty alcohol crude product, and recrystallizing the crude product by using a non-polar solvent to obtain the high-purity long-chain fatty alcohol, wherein the content of the high-purity long-chain fatty alcohol reaches more than 95%, and the appearance of the product is in a flaky crystal. According to the invention, by utilizing the inherent characteristics of the product, the product is separated from the residual oil by the strong alkali type anion resin, and then further purified, so that the obtained product has high purity, less impurities and good quality, and the contents of heavy metals and microorganisms meet the requirements of food additives; and the residual oil produced by vitamin E is used as the raw material, so that the source is concentrated, the raw material is rich, the cost islow, the process is simple, and the industrial production is easy to achieve.