Pressurized hot water extraction of natural products, including silymarins from Silybum marianum and saponins from Panax quinquefolium, with subsequent separation using fast centrifugal partition chromatography and verification with high-performance liqui

Recovery of compounds from plants has gained interest in recent years as the movement towards natural remedies and organic products has grown. Plants contain a variety of compounds that have been used in traditional/natural medicine for thousands of years. Only recently have the active ingredients in natural remedies been structurally identified and extensively studied. Extraction and purification of active plant compounds permits further study to gain an understanding of how these compounds behave in vitro, which can lead to marketable remedies and cures for various ailments.;The silymarins, which consist of six flavonolingans, were separated from a crude water extract. One of the compounds, silydianin, was purified to 93.7% in one CPC separation. The six major ginsenosides found in Panax quinquefolium, were separated from the crude extract using CPC. Ginsenoside Re was purified to 93% or greater for all CPC separations preformed. This is the first report on purification of silymarins from a water extract using CPC. This is also the first work to quantitatively compare Ultrasonic Assisted and Pressurized Hot Water Extraction of ginsenosides with subsequent purification by CPC. The recovery and subsequent separation of these compounds aid in developing methods that will be used in future projects to recover value-added compounds from biomass, which is of marked interest for the bio-economy.;The first step in recovery is extraction. Extraction with water alone, or with a mixture of water and a co-solvent, is attractive because water is environmentally benign. The second step in acquiring pure plant compounds is to separate the compounds of interest from the crude extraction mixture. Centrifugal partition chromatography (CPC) is a separation technique that uses two liquid phases, without the need for a solid support. The use of two liquids ensures that there is no sample loss because the lack of solid support prevents the valuable compounds from being adsorbed. Pressurized hot water extraction was used to recover silymarins from milk thistle (Silybum marianum) and ginsenosides from ginseng (Panax quinquefolium ) root. These two groups of compounds have both been used in natural remedies, silymarins in the Mediterranean region to treat various liver ailments, and ginsenosides, in Asia, have been used to treat blood-related disorders.