A Longer Shelf Life

A Longer Shelf Life

Chemical isolation benefits manufacturers.

A novel technique to produce a chemical widely used to lengthen the expiration dates of food, vitamins, and drugs does so at less cost and lower energy consumption. Sirun Yang, Adv ’22, worked with professors Ivan Aprahamian, Dale Mierke, and Maria Pellegrini and colleagues from Denmark on the new process, which uses light to more efficiently produce and isolate gamma-cyclodextrin. Until recently the benign, biodegradable chemical could be produced only through more costly steam distillation.

The technique, published in Chem, is six times more efficient at isolating the chemical. “It turned out to be highly beneficial for industry because it circumvents this whole energyconsuming, steam-distillation process,” Aprahamian says.

The discovery is expected to make the chemical more readily available to small-scale manufacturers.

Julia Robitaille ’23