Separation of natural compounds using eutectic solvent-based biphasic systems and centrifugal partition...

Area of Science:

• Green Chemistry
• Separation Science
• Analytical Chemistry

Background:

• Deep eutectic solvents (DES) offer tunable properties for liquid-liquid extraction.
• Ternary biphasic systems are effective for separating natural products.
• Levulinic acid and choline chloride or thymol are common DES components.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate ternary biphasic systems for natural compound separation.
• To evaluate the performance of different DES formulations.
• To optimize a system for centrifugal partition chromatography (CPC).

Main Methods:

• Formation and characterization of seven ternary biphasic systems.
• Measurement of binodal curves, densities, and phase compositions.
• Determination of partition coefficients for six natural compounds (quercetin, apigenin, coumarin, β-ionone, retinol, α-tocopherol).

Main Results:

• Choline chloride-based DES showed significant influence on partition coefficients, especially with 1-butanol or ethyl acetate.
• DES containing thymol resulted in poorer separation of natural compounds compared to choline chloride.
• A system of heptane, 1-butanol, and choline chloride:levulinic acid (1:3) was effective in CPC.

Conclusions:

• Optimized DES systems can enhance the separation of natural compounds.
• Choline chloride-based DES are more effective than thymol-based DES for this application.
• Centrifugal partition chromatography using selected DES enables efficient separation of valuable natural products.