A Novel Cyclodextrin-Based Adsorption Process for Natural Products Purification

Plants are increasingly being used to provide industry with high-value chemicals, biochemicals, and drugs. This proposal focuses on the isolation and purification of specific components in plant-derived oils. For example, L-menthod is a valuable chemical that is the major component of peppermint oil. L-Menthol is widely used in the flavoring of chewing gums, candies, desserts, and beverages; and L-menthol is used in the pharmaceutical industry as a local anesthetic, a cough suppressant, and an antibacterial. We propose to develop a new separation process that takes advantage of the high selectivity of cyclodextrins for chemical separations. Cyclodextrins are macrocyclic starch-derived polymers that contain 6, 7, or 8 glucose units attached in a ring structure, and they are rapidly gaining popularity as a selective sorbent in analytical-scale chromotography. This proposal is targeted towards development of a practical, large-scale, hollow-fiber membrane device that incorporates cyclodextrins chemically bound to hollow fibers. Multiple hollow fibers are grouped together in a hollow-fiber module and used to selectively absorb components from plant-derived oils. This device offers an attractive alternative to conventional packed-bed adsorption processes, which suffer from problems such as high pressure drop, bed channeling, and bed compression. In Phase I we will immobilize 8-cyclodextrin on hollo-fiber membranes, we will test small hollow-fiber devices on representative plant-oil separations, and we will characterize the hollow-fiber devices with respect to operating variables to determine the important issues to be addressed in the Phase II program.