Foam Fractionation Separation Of Heavy Floor Saponins

Foam fractionation technique has been developing fast as a new separation technique for decades. The separation process is based on the difference of surface activity and interface adsorption principle .At present, this technique has been used widely in these fields like mine selection, sewage treatment, bioengineering and so on. Recently, it's reported that foam fractionation is applied to enrich and separate active ingredients in traditional Chinese medicine especially saponin which belongs to surfactant substance. This paper chose polyphyllins from Rhizoma Paridis as the target and conducted a systematical research on the foam fractionation process of polyphyllin, in order to explore the feasibility and rule of application of foam fractionation for steroidal saponin's separation.Studied the surface activity and foam performance of Rhizoma Paridis physic liquor. Result indicated that polyphyllin is surfactant and its CMC in physic liquor is 0.3mg/ml.Besides, the physic liquor has good bubbling nature and its foam is steady, which is the premise of foam fractionation.Studied the foam fractionation process of polyphyllin in Rhizoma Paridis. Chose enrichment ratio, rate of recovery of polyphyllin and purity ratio as the performance criteria and single examining method to examine the operational parameters, i.e. gas diffuser, operation mode, air flow rate, initial feed concentration, solution pH, initial feed height and temperature on separation performance. Achieve optimal conditions of the process finally. Under the optimal condition , foam fluid could be concentrated more than 20 times compared to feed fluid and the purity of polyphyllin of product could reach as high as 40% .However, recovery was not so good, about 40%.Compared the foam fractionation process with macroporous adsorption resin process for polyphyllins for the purpose of estimating foam fractionation objectively. As a result, foam fractionation has other advantage over macroporous adsorption resin due to its low cost and no pollution and simple operation .With respect to separation effect, the former could get more pure product while lower recovery than latter. Tried to unite the foam fractionation and macroporous adsorption resin technique for separating polyphyllins. The result showed that combination of two process could increase recovery greatly.Through the systematic research and objective evaluation about the foam fractionation process for polyphyllins of Rhizoma Paridis , it is proved that foam fractionation process can work as a operation unit to separate polyphyllins. It has good enrichment and separation effect. The process is a simple , low-costing and environmental-protecting craft, which offers a new method for the separation of steroidal saponins in Rhizoma Paridis.