Ionic liquid surfactant-mediated ultrasonic-assisted extraction coupled to HPLC: Application to analysis of tanshinones in Salvia miltiorrhiza bunge.

J Sep Sci. 2009 Nov 24;

Authors: Wu K, Zhang Q, Liu Q, Tang F, Long Y, Yao S

Ionic liquid surfactants are a class of ionic liquids (ILs), which can form micelles in the aqueous solution. In this paper, we demonstrate a novel extracting system based on the use of IL surfactants in ultrasonic-assisted extraction followed by HPLC analysis. No organic solvents were used in the extraction, making this method environmentally friendly and more attractive than the conventional organic solvent-based extraction methods. As an example, this method was applied to determine tanshinones in Chinese herbal medicine Salvia miltiorrhiza bunge. The effect of the carbon chain length of the IL cation, as well as other influencing factors on ultrasonic-assisted extraction, was investigated in detail. Under the optimized conditions, satisfactory extraction efficiency was achieved with the recoveries ranging from 87.5 to 107.6%, and the RSDs were lower than 6%. This work shows a promising prospect of the IL surfactants in the extraction of active ingredients from herbs.

BOTTOM LINE: HPLC or high-performance liquid chromatography is an extremely refined way to separate, identify, and quantify compounds. In this case another highly sophisticated technique was added to improve the way components of herbs can be analyzed. As mentioned before, naturopathic purists would certainly say that separating out components of healing herbs is wrong and interferes with the ability of components to interact and amplify the effect. However, we also know that there are plenty of herbs which can be dangerous. Wouldn’t it me nice to separate the good parts and leave the dangerous components behind? This is a set of techniques to do just that and to prove that individual components have a scientifically plausible basis for their alleged healing actions.