Isolation of ferulic acid from nejayote using Centrifugal Partition Chromatography (CPC) Aislamiento de ácido ferúlico a partir de nejayote usando Cromatografía de Partición Centrífuga (CPC) Academic Article in Scopus uri icon

abstract

  • © 2021 Latin American and Caribbean Consortium of Engineering Institutions. All rights reserved.The production of tortillas and products derived from corn requires a cooking process known as nixtamalization. This process generates a waste known as nejayote which is a highly alkaline and polluting effluent, since it generates high biochemical oxygen demands. In Mexico, the tortilla industry generates millions of cubic meters of nejayote annually. Currently, nejayote is discarded as wastewater. Previous research has shown that nejayote solids contain crude fiber (45.3%), calcium (5.7%) and hydroxycinnamic acids, the most abundant being ferulic acid in free and conjugated form (219mg/100g). These phenolic compounds have shown great antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and chemopreventive potential. This shows great potential for the development of active ingredients from nejayote industrial waste. However, large amounts of these compounds are required to develop in vivo tests, and thus validate the cytotoxic effect of these compounds, but conventional extraction and purification processes such as alkaline hydrolysis and high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) are very long and involve long times of two to four hours. For this reason, an alternative is proposed for the use of industrially scalable purification technologies such as centrifugal partition chromatography (CPC) since this technique allows to process large quantities of material and depending on its distribution coefficient in a system of Simple and inexpensive solvents, it allows to separate the compounds of interest obtaining high yields in shorter periods.

publication date

  • January 1, 2021