Extraction of amino acids with emulsion liquid membranes using industrial surfactants and lecithin as stabilisers

Industrial surfactants (being the mixtures of several individual compounds) were used as stabilisers of emulsion liquid membranes (ELMs). Although, so me impurities present in technical formulations of these compounds were ext racted to aqueous solutions of amino acids, most of the used surfactants we ll served to this purpose. In the case of amino acid transport, they do not act as carriers and application of additional carrier (such as D2EHP) was required in order to facilitate the transport. Interestingly, the same prop erties were found for lecithin, industrially important natural surfactant. Lecithin applied as a chiral discriminator, used either as an emulsion stab iliser or carrier shows that this compound possesses insignificant enantios elective properties. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.