Extraction of vancomycin antibiotic from water using green emulsion liquid membrane based on sunflower oil

Abstract

The toxicity and carcinogenic effect of many drugs including antibiotics have brought up an environmental worry in the recent years. The current study examined a green emulsion liquid membrane (ELM) as an environmentally-friendly method for extracting Vancomycin antibiotic from its aqueous solutions. The main value of the idea is to reduce environmental risks of employing common unsafe organic solvents applied as diluent in the ELM process. For this purpose, the raw sunflower oil was employed to prepare ELM. An organic phase including the sunflower oil (diluents), Span 80 (emulsifier) and bis(2-ethylhexyl)phosphoric acid (D2EHPA) carrier was mixed with internal aqueous phase (stripping phase) containing NaOH. The results confirmed that almost 100% of Vancomycin was successfully extracted at the optimum conditions affecting parameters for preparing the membrane. The extraction percentage and emulsion stability was acceptable for the feeds with wide range of pH from 5-9 and NaCl concentration from 0-5 g/L. Also, a recovery percent of around 70% was achieved for the captured Vancomycin when the emulsion was broken.