Green Liquid Chromatography (water, ethanol and temperature)applied to the study of medicinal plants

• Grant number: 10/18840-7
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: March 01, 2011
• End date: February 22, 2015
• Field of knowledge: Physical Sciences and Mathematics - Chemistry - Organic Chemistry
• Principal Investigator: Alberto Jose Cavalheiro
• Grantee: Cristiano Soleo de Funari
• Host Institution: Instituto de Química (IQ). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Araraquara. Araraquara , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 12/15844-7 - A greener approach to the study of the green: sustainable liquid chromatography applied to the metabolite profile investigation of Brazilian medicinal plants, BE.EP.PD

Abstract

The contamination of water, air, soil and food by agrochemicals, industrial waste and toxic organic solvents, among others, have increased with the chemical industry development, putting at risk the maintenance of different life forms on Earth. In this context, Green Chemistry has been growing. In phytochemical investigations, frequently high amounts of toxic solvents are employed in successive fractionation and analysis steps. Gas Chromatography and Supercritical Chromatography have inherent characteristics of Green technology, but Liquid Chromatography can be applied in a sustainable way by the reduction and/or substitution of toxic and harmful solvents. The latter, applied to the analyses of Brazilian plants with well registered ethnopharmacological uses, is the focus of the present project. It aims at replacing methanol and acetonitrile for the non toxic, biodegradable and largely produced in Brazil ethanol. Despite the high viscosity of ethanol/water mixtures and the limit of about 400 bar of the High Performance Liquid Chromatography machines in our laboratory, the following three strategies will be applied to circumvent the challenges and achieve the optimal use of ethanol in research: employment of silica-based stationary phases by adjusting the flow rate to the system limit pressure; employment of monolithic columns, which will allow higher flow rates without high increases in pressure; and exploration of the temperature variable, since the heating of the mobile phase decreases its viscosity rather than affect the thermodynamics and kinetics of the separation processes.

Scientific publications

(4)

(References retrieved automatically from Web of Science and SciELO through information on FAPESP grants and their corresponding numbers as mentioned in the publications by the authors)

FUNARI, CRISTIANO SOLEO; CAVALHEIRO, ALBERTO JOSE; CARNEIRO, RENATO LAJARIM. Coupled monolithic columns as an alternative for the use of viscous ethanol-water mobile phases on chromatographic fingerprinting complex samples. REVISTA BRASILEIRA DE FARMACOGNOSIA-BRAZILIAN JOURNAL OF PHARMACOGNOSY, v. 28, n. 3, p. 261-266, MAY-JUN 2018. (14/50926-0, 13/07600-3, 10/18840-7)

FERREIRA, VINICIUS G.; LEME, GABRIEL M.; CAVALHEIRO, ALBERTO J.; FUNARI, CRISTIANO S.. Online Extraction Coupled to Liquid Chromatography Analysis (OLELC): Eliminating Traditional Sample Preparation Steps in the Investigation of Solid Complex Matrices. Analytical Chemistry, v. 88, n. 17, p. 8421-8427, SEP 6 2016. (10/18840-7, 13/07600-3)

CRISTIANO SOLEO FUNARI; ALBERTO JOSÉ CAVALHEIRO; RENATO LAJARIM CARNEIRO. Coupled monolithic columns as an alternative for the use of viscous ethanol–water mobile phases on chromatographic fingerprinting complex samples. REVISTA BRASILEIRA DE FARMACOGNOSIA-BRAZILIAN JOURNAL OF PHARMACOGNOSY, v. 28, n. 3, p. 261-266, 2018-06-00. (10/18840-7, 14/50926-0, 13/07600-3)

FUNARI, CRISTIANO SOLEO; CARNEIRO, RENATO LAJARIM; CREESE, MARI EGENESS; LEME, GABRIEL MAZZI; CAYALHEIRO, ALBERTO JOSE; HILDER, EMILY FRANCES. On Track for a Truly Green Propolis-Fingerprinting Propolis Samples from Seven Countries by Means of a Fully Green Approach. ACS SUSTAINABLE CHEMISTRY & ENGINEERING, v. 4, n. 12, p. 7110-7117, DEC 2016. (10/18840-7, 13/07600-3, 12/15844-7, 10/16520-5)