Deep eutectic solvents as green extractant for supported liquid membranes separation of amino acids

Details

Supervisors

Luis Alconero, Patricia

Faculty

Ecole polytechnique de Louvain

Degree label

Master [120] : ingénieur civil en chimie et science des matériaux, à finalité spécialisée

Abstract

Essential for many biological processes, amino acids are extensively used among various industries such as in food, pharmaceutics, and cosmetics. However their significance, separation, and purification account for a considerable amount of the total production cost and raise environmental issues. Common industrial techniques, such as ion-exchange chromatography, suffer from high costs and negative environmental effects. Innovative technologies such as extraction through supported liquid membranes (SLMs), which have the potential to cut energy use, have received attention as potential solutions to these problems. Furthermore, there are encouraging developments in the creation of membranes that use deep eutectic solvents (DES). These emerging solvents address waste management, solvent toxicity and aim to improve yield, purity, selectivity, and product recovery. The purpose of this work is to use an SLM to specifically extract a subset of amino acids. Understanding each of the constituent parts of the membrane system, is necessary to comprehend the system as a whole. Trioctylphosphine oxide-thymol (TOPO-thymol) is a previously chosen deep eutectic solvent that will be thoroughly examined to learn more about how it functions and interacts with its environment. Among the experiments, the Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) membrane with 100 nm pores has shown promising results with the highest selectivity towards alanine in an aqueous mixture with acceptable arginine levels. PTFE 100 nm, enabled around 60% recovery of alanine with 20 % of arginine. PVDF 100 nm showed very high selectivity results in a much shorter time period, with almost pure 10 % recovery of alanine in three hours, selectivity then decreased with time.