Studies on biomass based adsorptive membrane for biomolecule separation: Quercetin and rutin

As a step towards the development of adsorptive membrane separation processes for recovery of quercetin and rutin from aqueous extract, mixed matrix membranes comprising polysulfone and fruit peel particles have been prepared and characterized. Adsorption equilibrium and kinetics of both molecules have been systematically studied. Characterization of the membranes has been done by using BET, FTIR, SEM and TGA techniques. The prepared membranes are observed to have pore sizes in the range 0.0001 to 50 μm, determined from SEM data. The molecular diameters of quercetin and rutin, as calculated to be 0.0008 and 0.001 μm are found larger than the pore diameters of the membranes which conform to Microfiltration and Ultrafiltration. For adsorptive membrane separation to be effective the criteria should be assessed from high equilibrium adsorption, comparable to the biomolecules reported for other polymeric systems. Even for adsorptive membrane the solute transport across the pores are predictable by Hagen- Poiseuille Equation. From the result of studies, it can be inferred that adsorptive membrane principle can be exploited to develop a membrane based process for separation of flavonoids. • An effort has been made to develop mixed matrix membranes using biofiller. • Adsorptive membrane principle can be exploited for separation of flavonoids. • Pore diameters of the membranes conform to microfiltration and ultrafiltration.