Efficient and economical downstream processing of biological products has been one of the main challenges
of biotechnology industry. Aqueous two-phase systems (ATPSs) are long known to be a promising separation
technique and a valuable alternative to the conventional approaches.
Since their first application, ATPSs have been used for a wide range of applications, mainly in the separation
and recovery of bioproducts. Their clear advantageous features and their potential as extraction technique
has been demonstrated through the years.
Regardless of their potential, only recently the use of ATPSs by the industry sector has received relevant
interest. Yet, for their successful use it is important to study systems properties at molecular level and
understand the mechanisms of solute partitioning.
The Collander equation was proposed to describe solute partition in water-organic solvent systems, but this
model has been effectively extended to correlate partition of unrelated compounds in two (or more) different
ATPSs, supporting the idea that this model can be used to predict partitioning in ATPSs.
So far, the use of the Collander equation to describe and predict the partition of solutes present in complex
mixtures, in ATPSs, was never reported. Thus, we attempted to apply this empirical model to a real case
scenario of ATPS partitioning, aiming the recovery of three natural pigments obtained by submerged
fermentation of a Penicillium strain.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
