An Automated Liquid-Liquid Extraction System Supervised by an Industrial Programmable Logic Controller

Abstract

In the case of development of new products in organic synthesis, the final step of the process must offer the best purity. In this way, the final step is a unit operation of isolation like distillation, crystallisation or liquid-liquid extraction. Therefore, it is necessary to integrate a module of purification on an automated platform for achieving the whole process. In our case, an automated platform was based on Zymark architecture allowing us to automate sample preparation and the reaction steps. For the purification module, we opted to develop our own home module: a liquid-liquid extraction module. This unit operation permits us to separate the final product in the case of peptide synthesis in liquid phase, but equally, in the case of isolation of vegetable molecules. The module capacities had to permit the multistage extraction and the determination of the binodal curve for optimising the process, and to possess in our own system for liberating the Zymark robot for other tasks. The operator interface is developed by using a SCADA (supervisory control).