Extraction of Amino Acid Enantiomers with Microemulsions

Abstract

Abstract The enantioselective extractions of phenylalanine and tryptophane with oil‐in‐water microemulsion were investigated, where Igepal CO‐630 was used as a non‐ionic surfactant and cyclohexane was employed as the organic phase. N‐heptyl‐L‐hydroxyproline, N‐decyl‐L‐hydroxyproline and N‐hexadecyl‐L‐hydroxyproline were used as hydrophobic chiral selectors and immobilized in the microemulsion droplets. In order to investigate the complexation chemistry, experiments were performed at different conditions by varying the initial concentrations of the enantiomers, pH values and composition of the microemulsion. As a result, the enatioselectivity for tryptophane was seen to be higher than for phenylalanine with all three selectors.