Bio-based aerogels for targeted enrichment of phytochemicals: Nano-cellulose molecularly imprinted aerogels for Baccatin III separation

Efficient and green targeted enrichment of phytochemicals is crucial for healthy food and medicine products. In this paper, nano-cellulose aerogels with rich network pore structure and high comparative area were combined with molecular imprinting polymer technology to innovatively prepare nano-cellulose molecularly imprinted aerogels (NCAG-MIP) for targeted enrichment of phytochemicals, NCAG-MIP could be designable by changing the different template molecules. Herein, NCAG-BacMIP was prepared for the taxanes compound baccatin III as a template molecule. Through a series of characterization and adsorption experiments, the adsorption mechanism of NCAG-BacMIP on baccatin III was analyzed, which was consistent with the adsorption pseudo-second model and the Langmuir adsorption model. The adsorption capacity of NCAG-BacMIP for targeted baccatin III reached 66.54 mg g−1 at an adsorption temperature of 30 °C and pH of 5. The selectivity coefficients were 6.66, 6.19, and 7.19 for the structural analogs paclitaxel, 10 deacetylbaccatin III, and 7-xylose-10-deacetyl-paclitaxel, respectively. In the application of baccatin III enrichment from Taxus × media Rehde extracts, the content of baccatin III increased 11.6-fold after NCAG-BacMIP treatment. The novel NCAG-BacMIP blotting different template molecules would have good potential in the selective separation of phytochemicals from plant extracts.