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A Spicy CCC/CPC Application |
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Written by The Clever Chromatographer
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Saturday, 25 July 2009 10:30 |
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A recent article in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry entitled “Purification of Curcumin, Demethoxycurcumin, and Bisdemethoxycurcumin by High-Speed Countercurrent Chromatography” showcases several strengths of CCC/CPC separations as well as a major challenge. The authors succeeded in separating three closely related curcumin cogeners with a 270 mL HSCCC instrument. They employed an unusual, but very effective sample preparation strategy. The curcumin powder was vigorously mixed with both upper and lower phases of the HSCCC solvent system. The solution was centrifuged and the supernatant directly introduced into the sample loop. A detailed identification of the 3 curcuminoids was performed with NMR and LC-MS/MS. The biological activity of the isolated compounds was assessed and the surprising result was reported that antioxidant character of curcumin powder is almost entirely due to the presence of curcumin. A rather disturbing aspect of this article is that an astonishing 63 different solvent systems were investigated for all three curcuminoid K values. I count 7 solvent system families, as well as four 2-solvent combinations. The chosen solvent system was Hexane-Chloroform-Methanol-Water 10:20:15:5
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Last Updated on Tuesday, 11 August 2009 19:18 |
