Micellar Extraction using Ionic Liquids as Co-Surfactants

FILIPA A. VICENTE; LUCIANA PELLEGRINI MALPIEDI; ADALBERTO PESSOA JR; JOÃO A.P. COUTINHO; SÓNIA P.M. VENTURA

Toronto

Congreso; 2nd International Conference on Ionic Liquids in Separation and Purification Technology; 2014

Aqueous micellar two-phase systems (AMTPS) using surfactants have been applied for years as advantageous extraction systems, since they are mostly composed of water, emerging as a further appellative type of liquid-liquid extraction. A wide range of biomolecules such as proteins, viruses, DNA and antibiotics have been separated, concentrated and purified by applying these systems with a plethora of surfactants. Early in the 21st century, AMTPS composed by two surfactants were shown to enhance the extraction of biomolecules, hence exploiting the advantage of a second surfactant (the so-called co-surfactant) seemed an interesting choice. Thus, the use of ionic liquids (ILs) as a new class of co-surfactants came as an attractive alternative due to their unique properties. The alkylmethylimidazolium [Cnmim] family has been widely studied and demonstrated to self-aggregate in micelles, having also reports on their incorporation in mixed micelles. In this work, two families of ILs, namely the [Cnmim] and phosphonium were applied in the design of new AMTPS, based in Triton X-114 as surfactant. To evaluate the potential of this new liquid-liquid extraction system the partition and purification of different (bio)molecules using these technologies is here analyzed, considering the effect of the ILs as co-surfactants in the coexistence curves their impact upon the solutes partition. In this work two biomolecules, cytochrome c and Rhodamine 6G, are studied and the partition coefficient (K) and the recovery parameter (R) are used for the evaluation of AMTPS with ILs as co-surfactants.