Efficient and selective extraction of sinomenine by deep eutectic solvents

Sinomenine is the main bio-active ingredient of Sinomenii Caulis and usually produced by solventextraction techniques. However, the extraction of sinomenine suffers from the lack of highly efficient and environmentally-benign solvents. In this work, deep eutectic solvents (DESs) based on fragrances were synthesized, hydrogen-bond donors (HBDs) and hydrogen-bond acceptors (HBAs) components of DESs were identified and their extraction ability for sinomenine was evaluated and the extraction conditions were optimized by single-factor and orthogonal design experiments. It was found that the hydrogen-bonding interaction between sinomenine and DESs was the main extraction driving force and there was no explicit relationship between the extraction ability and the hydrophobicity of the DESs. The DESs could be recycled and sinomenine could be recovered quantitatively via backextraction. High-purity sinomenine ((95.0 +/- 2.3)%) could be produced. These findings suggest that DESs are highly-effective solvents for the isolation of sinomenine and exhibit great potential for the extraction of other bio-active compounds.(c) 2022 The Chemical Industry and Engineering Society of China, and Chemical Industry Press Co., Ltd. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

In this study, deep eutectic solvents (DESs) based on fragrances were synthesized and their extraction ability for sinomenine was evaluated. The results showed that the hydrogen-bonding interaction between sinomenine and DESs was the main driving force for extraction, and the hydrophobicity of the DESs did not significantly affect the extraction ability. DESs could be recycled and sinomenine could be quantitatively recovered via backextraction, resulting in high-purity sinomenine. These findings suggest that DESs are highly-effective solvents for the isolation of sinomenine and have great potential for extracting other bio-active compounds.