I need to isolate phenolics from the plant extracts. I had tried it with amberlite xad, but I didn't get sufficient separation. Can any one suggest better separation method for phenolics (without using C-18 or sephadex)?
AMBERLITE™ XAD™4 is a polymeric adsorbent based on highly crosslinked, macroreticular polystyrene, aliphatic, or phenol-formaldehyde condensate polymers. It is used for recovery of high value materials, mainly for purification, decolorization, capture of pharmaceuticals and biopharmaceuticals and detergent removal. It is a white translucent beads, having 54 to 60 % moistire holding capacity and bead size, size between 0.49 - 0.69 mm. plant phenolics from aqueous extract can be extracted by using Amberlite XAD-2 resin.
If you are trying to separate phenolics using aqueous alcoholic extract then depending on percent of alcohol (methanol/ethanol) separation will be affected. As you are using a reversed phase resin, the higher percent of alcohol will not allow sufficient binding and a mixture will be obtained. Try to minimise the percent of alcohol while loading or if you are loading only aqueous extract then try to modify the elution pattern with increase in concentration of alcohol in water (use first the step gradient).