Adsorptive separation of certain pharmaceutically important plant products from aqueous solution equilibrium kinetics column dynamic studies

Abstract

Introduction Occurrence of soluble pharamaceutically important compounds in plant products is abundant but their separation and purification particularly in maintaining the original value and also minimizing the residual effects because of predominant use of various chemical extraction methods is often difficult1. Separation of pharmaceutically important plant products and their need of study to explore new purification methods to overcome the problems are discussed. Two pharmaceutically significant water soluble plant products viz. caffeine and ginsenoside are selected and taken as standard representative compounds for undertaking the present study. An adsorptive separation technique, which is based on polymeric resins, is used as a potential solution to the separation difficulty. The objective of the research work is to study the equilibrium, kinetics and enthalpies of aqueous phase adsorption of certain pharmaceutically important bioactive compounds with selected neutral polymetric resins for suggesting appropriate isotherm and kinetic model. The study is also projected to develop a knowledge base for design of suitable adsorbents with high selectivity and capacity for the selected pharmaceutically important biomolecues like caffeine and ginsenoside through experimental studies and establish the feasibility of the adsorptive separation process in fixed bed columns to suggest appropriate configuration for design of process through mathematical modeling and simulation exercises in technological perspectives. The structure and properties of the selected compounds along with those of the polymeric resins and their advantage of use in separation and purification processes are presented and discussed. An overview of the adsorptive separation process and its significance and importance with reference to separation and purification of high valued plant products from aqueous solutions is also provided. Adsorption equilibrium The fundamental aspects of study for assessing the feasibility of an adsorption process for...