A Review of Mixed Reverse Micelle System for Antibiotic Recovery

This article discusses the application of mixed reverse micelles in downstream processing of antibiotics. Purification and recovery processes for antibiotics in downstream processing are major expenses, about 70% of the total cost of production, giving them a significant impact on manufacturing cost. Moreover, there are a number of challenges and difficulties in the separation process requirements for antibiotics, since the mixture is quite complex, with broth, hazardous solvents, by-products, intermediate material, and impurities; in addition, antibiotics are easy to denature. Therefore, the development of effective separation techniques is required to produce high-purity of biomaterials. The use of reverse micelles is thought to be among the most promising due to the process's high selectivity and efficiency. Most studies on reverse micelle extraction technology have been performed by using anionic surfactant sodium bis (2-ethyl-1-hexyl) sulfosuccinate (AOT). However, the activities of antibiotics hosted in this type of surfactant have a significant effect due to the strong electrostatic and hydrophobic interaction between antibiotic and surfactant molecules. Due to these problems many alternatives have been developed recently, and reverse micelles have high potential in the purification of biomolecules. Therefore, this review discusses the ability of mixed ionic-nonionic reverse micelles to provide a safe microenvironment for antibiotics by maintaining the strength of attraction between the reverse micelle molecule and the antibiotic while avoiding the denaturation of the antibiotic. The article highlights the potential of mixed ionic-nonionic reverse micelle technology as a tool of antibiotic recovery from various mediums.