Validation of Automated Liquid-Liquid Extraction (Partition Chromotography) of β-Carotene Using VERSA Workstation

Liquid-liquid extraction, or partition chromotography, can be a manually intensive and time-consuming procedure for many downstream applications. Aurora Biomed validated the VERSA Mini Liquid-Liquid Extraction Workstation to automatically perform these procedures. In this validation, the water-alcohol (1:1) sample was spiked with β-Carotene at 850µg/mL. The workstation was programmed to either auto-mix the sample (liquid phase) and hexane solvent (organic phase) using a shaker on the deck or by pipette action of the liquid-handling head. After mixing, the organic phase was extracted. The extraction profile showed that 90.1 and 9.3% of the β-carotene was extracted in the first and second extraction, respectively, using the deck shaker. The deck shaker provided better partitioning of the phases that the pipette. In addition, the extraction profiles at two different shaker speeds (1100rpm and 700rpm) were compared and it was found that 1100rpm shaking resulted in better partitioning.