Prof. Shuxiang Dong's group has made an important progress in the field of piezoelectric micro-electromechanical devices: one piezoceramic generates two motors’ function

Chiral drugs, agrochemicals, food additives and fragrances are urgently needed high-value compounds that require cost-effective separation strategies for their economically feasible production. Out of different separation strategies, centrifugation has a long record in industrial-scale separation for example of cream from milk or of proteins from muscle hydrolysate. The latter requires expensive high-speed ultracentrifugation of around 50.000 g that cannot be exploited for mass production.

The separation power of centrifugation can be drastically enhanced when the colloidal structure of the solution is controlled: emulsion droplets move in centrifugal fields orders of magnitude faster than individual molecules. They are thus the key for separation at very soft centrifugal fields of 3.000 g, which are cheaper to perform and open the commercialization of compounds too expensive to produce so far.

Research teams from Constance and Regensburg in Germany and from Marcoule in France show in the research paper “Two Types of Liquid Phase Separation Induced by Soft Centrifugation in Aqueous Ethyl Acetate Using Ethanol as Cosolvent” Research 2023;6:Article 0026 that soft centrifugation can trigger emulsification of multi-component aqueous solutions in an energy-efficient way. Once formed, the droplets can be separated from the surrounding liquid similar to the separation of cream.

Since the “birth” of ultra-centrifugation one century ago in the Nobel prize awarded work of Theodor Svedberg, the whole literature about centrifugation deals with the separation of particles. We have shown that elusive dynamic aggregates can also be centrifuged, and thus much lower energy and effluents costs are around the corner, ready to serve industry says Prof. Thomas Zemb, Director of Research in charge of green innovations in recycling chemistry at the French Atomic Commission. The key is hyperfine separation even of chiral drugs by soft centrifugation says Prof. Helmut Coelfen from the University of Constance. We could only achieve this by an alliance of theoretical chemistry, colloid science and chemical engineering, says Prof. Dominik Horinek from the University of Regensburg. Merging knowledge stimulating the exploration at the molecular level is essential to more forward a technical innovation for sustainable alternative of traditional chiral chromatography say Prof Giancarlo Cravotto and Prof Katia Martina from the University of Torino.