On 22 Jan, 09:09, Huge wrote:
On 2009-01-21, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Stuart Noble wrote:
The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Stuart Noble wrote:
The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Stuart Noble wrote:
Andrew Gabriel wrote:
In article ,
* * Stuart Noble writes:

Ooh, the nostalgia. I spent some months many years ago, trying to determine the
metabolic pathway of the breakdown of butyl benzene sulphonate (BBS), a
degradation product of detergents, and a detergent in its own right. I did this
by synthesising BBS and growing bacteria on it in continuous culture, so that
anything that survived must be metabolising BBS. The initial culture in the
fermenter came from the sewage works... I then tried to do ether separation of
whatever the bacteria had excreted, so I could do photospectrometry on it.. Of
course, the residual BBS made the ether go into solution in the aqueous
fermenter waste. * *(

Computing seems so much easier.

So how did you extract the excretion products finally? I'd be tempted
to remove the water and volatiles by vacuum distillation, then an
ether extraction on the condensed volatiles (which shouldn't contain
any BBS). Having removed the water, the residue will still have BBS,
but without the water, ether extraction should work.

Did you do chromatographic separation of the components afterwards?

Cheers,

Sid