GREENMULTIDIMCO2 · Towards greener and more sustainable analytical approaches: Development of an integrative supercritical CO2-based multidimensional system for bioactive compound study in natural and biological samples

Towards greener and more sustainable analytical approaches: Development of an integrative supercritical CO2-based multidimensional system for bioactive compound study in natural and biological samples

Natural and biological samples, such as plants, foods, and biofluids, contain thousands of compounds with diverse chemical properties. Many of these compounds are bioactive, which means they can influence biological functions and be relevant not only to health-related questions, but also to new industrial developments in fields like medicine, cosmetics, and renewable materials. Due to their chemical complexity, characterizing these samples is challenging and often requires several analytical steps, including sample preparation, extraction, and separation. These workflows not only take a lot of time and resources, but they also use toxic solvents, which are harmful to the environment and human health. The goal of this project was to develop a more sustainable analytical approach using carbon dioxide-based supercritical fluid technologies and advanced coupling techniques, to integrate both sample preparation and analysis steps into a single, automated workflow. For this, we aimed to develop an online multidimensional system combining supercritical fluid extraction and two-dimensional supercritical fluid chromatography for extensive bioactive compound characterization in a single run. To achieve this goal, the project focused on the main bottleneck currently limiting integrated CO2-based workflows: interface compatibility. The work was organized on three main developments: (i) designing multi-step extraction and separation strategies for analyzing polar and non-polar compounds from the same sample, (ii) developing new ways to transfer extracts and fractions without degrading separation performance, and (iii) demonstrating the approach on real-world applications, such as natural products for nutraceutical and traditional medicine use, and lipid-focused biological analyses. By advancing online multidimensional CO2-based workflows, the project aimed to create more sustainable analytical tools. These tools are expected to help research and innovation by providing detailed compound analysis in fields like food safety, cosmetic formulation, pharmaceutical development, and environmental monitoring, among others.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз