Three-phase partitioning for the separation of proteins, enzymes, biopolymers, oils and pigments: a review

摘要

Abstract Modern biomass and organic waste are becoming major, carbon-neutral sources of fine chemicals, biomolecules and fuels to replace fossil fuel products. As a consequence, there is a strong demand for advanced separation techniques to purify biomolecules occurring in complex mixtures, because actual downstream processing?accounts for a major part of the overall cost. Here we review the mechanism, methods and applications of three-phase partitioning. Methods include macroaffinity ligand-, metal ion-, enzyme-, ultrasound-, ionic liquid- and microwave-assisted partitioning. Applications to the purification of recombinant and conjugated proteins, enzymes, carbohydrate polymers, lipids and pigment are presented. Three-phase partitioning precipitates biomolecules from aqueous solutions using t-butanol and ammonium sulphate. This technique is applicable for?both upstream and downstream?with unrefined samples, and downstream, when a simple and scalable step is required. The yield of the biomolecules reaches 90% and higher, and the maximum purification degree is 12–40-fold. Three-phase partitioning allows about 70% of potential savings over standard chromatographic procedures.