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Abstract(s)
Olive leaves present high content of bioactive compounds. Despite this, they are discarded away without repurposing. These compounds are useful in a variety of industries such as food, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals. The present research proposes a continuous process of adsorption-desorption that relies on molecularly imprinting polymers (MIPs) as adsorbents, to purify the bioactive compounds. The first part of this work involves the design and synthesis of MIPs targeting quercetin, oleanolic acid, and oleuropein, which are representative compounds from the families of flavonoids, triterpenoids, and secoiridoids, respectively. Subsequently, these synthesized MIPs were assessed using solid-phase extraction to determine their retention capacities and selectivity towards bioactive compounds from the aforementioned families. This step permitted to select the materials that were suitable for continuous processes of adsorption-desorption. The criteria of this selection were based on the morphology of the materials (size, swelling etc.) and their retention capacity as well as their selectivity. For the continuous system, different-sized columns were utilized (up to 25 g of adsorbent was packed). The selected MIP was saturated with the extract and operated in recycle closed loop system, followed by desorption using various solvent fractions. Additionally, isotherm studies helped
design the conditions for separating different families of bioactive compounds. The desorbed fractions
were analysed using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). The results show that the
different desorbed fractions isolated contain specific types of bioactive compounds. It was also found
that a second purification step could be considered to further increase the purity of the compounds.
Description
Keywords
Molecular imprinting polymer Bioactive compounds Continuous process