Naproxen recovery by green emulsion liquid membranes based on soybean oil

Drugs are chemical substances that come from either natural occurrence or synthetic sources. These compounds are designed to have some pharmacological effects, give some benefits to society, and remain through time. Their bioaccumulation or their interactions with other chemicals has been considered as a health risk because they can cause adverse effects on ecosystems and human health. The Emulsion Liquid Membranes (ELM) technique is proposed as a useful and simple methodology in the drug elimination from sewage water. In recent years, some green methods integrated by vegetable oils have been reported; nevertheless, toxic carriers continue to be used. Soybean oil has been reported in stability studies and formulation improvement of cosmetic, food and pharmaceutical emulsions, but not in emulsions for drugs recovery. Thus, a methodology totally environmentally friendly was developed in this work, without carriers and using only soybean oil. The ELM was integrated by soybean oil + Abil EM 90 (R) 0.25 wt% as organic phase; NaHCO3 0.1 mol & sdot;L- 1 as internal aqueous phase and all these emulsified at 19000 rpm for 10 minutes and a VIAP/VOP ratio equal to 1:1 respectively. It was able to extract 81% of naproxen and subsequent 67% recovery in 5 minutes of stirring. It can be inferred that soybean oil is an effective and green option because it can act as a carrier and as a diluent in ELMs for drugs recovery.