Extraction of amino acids with emulsion liquid membranes using industrial surfactants and lecithin as stabilisers

Industrial surfactants (being the mixtures of several individual compounds) were used as stabilisers of emulsion liquid membranes (ELMs). Although, some impurities present in technical formulations of these compounds were extracted to aqueous solutions of amino acids, most of the used surfactants well served to this purpose. In the case of amino acid transport, they do not act as carriers and application of additional carrier (such as D2EHP) was required in order to facilitate the transport. Interestingly, the same properties were found for lecithin, industrially important natural surfactant. Lecithin applied as a chiral discriminator, used either as an emulsion stabiliser or carrier, shows that this compound possesses insignificant enantioselective properties.