As biofuels occupies a larger and larger portion of our planet’s total fuel consumption, vast amounts of biomass will be converted into more useful forms (e.g. biodiesel). What is often missed is that biomass can contain some interesting and valuable phytochemicals, like flavonoids and saponins.

We recently visited the Biological Engineering department at the University of Arkansas (UARK) to enhance the detection capabilities of their CPC system with an ELSD.  During our visit we learned that this group, led by Dr. Danielle Julie Carrier, is laying the groundwork to develop a process that could be seamlessly integrated into the current biochemical refineries.  The production of vegetable oils (the main component of biodiesel) leaves behind large quantities of potentially useful phytochemicals, many possessing valuable properties such as antioxidant or antimicrobial activity.  These chemicals could be easily extracted with pressurized hot water prior to the biofuel conversion process.

As an early adopter of countercurrent chromatography to this industry, Dr. Carrier’s group is using their CPC as an isolation/purification tool for investigating these valuable compounds.  She says quite simply, “CCC technology is allowing us to develop novel processing methods. ”

CPC is a wonderful tool for isolating compounds from a crude plant extract.  In a single run, with a crude extract solution from Milk thistle seeds, I was able to purify silydianin (a flavonolingan) up to 94.6% purity.  Another great feature is that since there is no solid stationary phase, the solvent system of the CPC can be modified in order to separate almost any compound.

There is immeasurable value in industrial waste streams, and CCC is likely to be the single most valuable tool for exploiting them.

One of the most compelling reasons for adopting CCC is it’s ability to achieve gentle, lossless separations - where conventional techniques fail. The examples are endless, but I found this one to be a particularly interesting application to marine research (preparative isolation of tunichrome B-1 pigment from sea squirts).

I was initially exposed to this work via this blog entry. But I strongly urge those interested to obtain the original article (which can be found here) - an interesting read. The problem and solution is summed up quite simply in this quote from Nakanishi et al. (1986):

The tunichromes readily decompose on hplc and hence could not be separated on a scale larger than analytical. Luckily, a prototype CCCC instrument became available in our laboratory, and it was only through this chromatographic method that further semiprep scale purification of tunichromes was achieved.

Nakanishi was lucky enough to have access to an early prototype instrument to complete his work. I should note that more than twenty years later, current instrumentation and knowledge would yield much faster runs with much greater ease.