Rational Screening of Deep Eutectic Solvents for the Direct Extraction of α-Tocopherol from Deodorized Distillates

Abstract

As traditional methods for retrieving natural vitamin E suffer from harsh operating conditions and poor process performance, seeking more energy-efficient and sustainable alternative approaches is highly desirable. In this work, deep eutectic solvents (DESs) as a class of emerging media are particularly proposed for the extraction of vitamin E (modeled by α-tocopherol) from deodorized distillates under mild operating conditions. To select DESs suitable for this task, a rational screening method is presented which covers the thermodynamic evaluation of individual components and component combinations, the assessment of environment, health, and safety (EHS) impacts of components, and the eutectic behavior estimation of component combinations. Based on experimentally reported DESs from the literature, individual components as well as random combinations of potential hydrogen bond acceptors (HBAs) and hydrogen bond donors (HBDs) are successively prescreened by COSMO-RS predicted thermodynamic properties. Five EHS-related properties of HBDs are assessed by VEGA. The formation of eutectics and the corresponding operating window of different HBA–HBD combinations are estimated by COSMO-RS solid–liquid equilibria prediction. Experiments are finally performed with the top-ranked DESs, which well validates the reliability of the screening method and identifies tetrabutylphosphonium chloride–ethanolamine (2:1) as a suitable DES for the α-tocopherol extraction.

Deep eutectic solvents as a versatile platform toward CO2 capture and utilization

“…78 The results show that the perturbed chain-SAFT model is suitable to estimate CO 2 solubility in various DESs by modelling complex hydrogen bond interaction with gases for the investigated association of CO 2 . Additionally, COSMO-RS is also a useful tool for predicting thermodynamic properties, 79 phase equilibrium, 80 and gas solubility 81 of ILs/DESs, which can guide the rational design and screening DESs for specific applications.…”

Computer-Aided Molecular Design of Ionic Liquids as Advanced Process Media: A Review from Fundamentals to Applications

“…Following this step, promising CO 2 absorbents were screened by combining the melting point constraint, the estimation of EHS impacts of HBDs, the prediction of absorption/desorption potential by COSMO-RS, and experimental measurement. Later, Cheng et al further modified this hierarchical ES screening framework by applying the COSMO-RS SLE prediction for justifying the possibility of ES formation from diverse HBA-HBD combinations, which was illustrated on the case study of α-tocopherol extraction from methyl linoleate (a model mixture for natural vitamin E extraction from deodorized distillates). Very recently, this hierarchical ES screening framework was combined with that for ILs to present a large-scale comparative screening of the two types of neoteric solvents for CO 2 capture .…”

Mechanistic Understanding on Difluoromethane Absorption Thermodynamics on Novel Deep Eutectic Solvents by COSMO-Based Molecular Simulation

“…The "Virtual models for property Evaluation of chemicals within a Global Architecture" (VEGA) [29,30] K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN) environmental health and safety (EHS) predictive model was used was used in the evaluation of persistence, bioconcentration factor (BCF), mutagenicity, carcinogenicity, and acute toxicity for selected DES components. VEGA has been relied upon for the EHS property analysis of novel solvents including DES [31][32][33]. The model requires an input of each molecule in the Simplified Molecular Input Line Entry System (SMILES) format.…”

“…In general, type 5 DES are considered as comprising "green" components that are environmentally benign. The four HBA and four HBD selected from Section 3.2 are evaluated for this merit through a search of the available safety data sheet (SDS) data from Fischer Scientific [31,39]. The values that were unable to be determined were run through the VEGA KNN-based environmental health and safety (EHS) software, for which a further description can be found in Section 2.2.…”