Isolation of α-arbutin from Xanthomonas CGMCC 1243 fermentation broth by macroporous resin adsorption chromatography

alpha-Arbutin is a glycosylated hydroquinone which has inhibitory function against tyrosinase. In this work, a one-step isolation of alpha-arbutin from Xanthomonas CGMCC 1243 fermentation broth by macroporous resin adsorption chromatography was investigated. The research results indicated that S-8 resin offered the best adsorption and desorption capacities for alpha-arbutin than others and its equilibrium adsorption data were well-fitted to the Freundlich isotherm. In order to optimize the operating parameters for separating alpha-arbutin, dynamic adsorption and desorption tests on S-8 column chromatography were carried out. Under optimized conditions (adsorption volume of 7 bed volume (BV), mobile phase of 25% (v/v) ethanol solution and elution volume of 3 BV), the purity and recovery of alpha-arbutin were 97.3% (w/w) and 90.9% (w/w), respectively. The product was identified as alpha-arbutin by C-13 NMR and H-1 NMR analysis. Moreover, we scaled up S-8 column from laboratory test (10 cm x 2 cm ID) to large scale (500 cm x 100 cm ID) without diminishing alpha-arbutin yield. In conclusion, the results in this work provide a one-step and cost-effective method for large-scale production of alpha-arbutin. (C) 2013 Published by Elsevier B.V.