Green Chemistry Blog

Pure vanillin can be recovered from fermentation media in a single, sustainable, solvent-free pervapouration step.

Vanillin is one of the world’s most important aroma compounds in the profitable market of flavours and fragrances. The majority of vanillin is produced chemically, with only a very small proportion extracted from beans. Vanillin can also be produced from fermentation processes, which have significantly lower production costs and give a high quality product.  However, vanillin produced by this method can only be described as ‘natural’ if its recovery from the fermentation media does not adversely affect the product quality.  This is an important characteristic as ‘natural’ vanillin has a much higher commercial price that synthetic vanillin.

In this work Crespo and co-workers have used an organophilic pervaporation method to recover vanillin from fermentation media.  This process involves a hydrophobic non-porous membrane in which hydrophobic solutes sorb very favourably to it, diffuse across the membrane and desorb under stimulus (e.g. changes in pressure).  This method avoids the use of organic solvents and contamination from adsorbents, and provided quantitative recovery of vanillin.

To find our more, just click the link below!  This article is free to access until 29th August!

Sustainable recovery of pure natural vanillin from fermentation media in a single pervaporation step, Carla Brazinha, Dalje S. Barbosa and João G. Crespo, Green Chem., 2011, DOI: 10.1039/C1GC15308K