Separation And Purification Of Inulin

Inulin, a natural functional polysaccharide, is a mixture of oligofructose and polyfructose, which has good market prospects respectively at home and abroad.However, the degree of polymerization of each inulin fructans have very similar chemical structures, resulting in separation difficult. The keys to achieve promotion and application of oligofructose and polyfructose are separation and purification of inulin.In this article, we have discussed the organic solvent precipitation method,single-column chromatography and continuous chromatography. In organic solvent precipitation method, different solubility of oligo / polyfructose in water(or dimethylformamide or dimethyl sulphoxide)- alcohol(or ketone) lead to obtain a purity of 88.25% polyfructose, and the advantage of this extraction method is convenient, low production costs, abundant source of raw materials. Then using a single-column chromatography has defined the type of resin and the ion type, and we enlarged to pilot continuous chromatography by a single column chromatography. It makes use of Taguchi method to optimize the flow rates in four different regions, the results show that the flow rate in Zone One has influenced most on the purity of FOS.After the Taguchi method be optimized, the optimal elution flow rates are that Zone One: 60ml/min, Zone Two: 40ml/min, Zone Three: 40ml/min, Zone Four: 55ml/min.And under this conditions, the purity of FOS is 92.34%, and the advantage of this method is simple to operate, and can be used for industrial mass production.