Anti-Solvent Precipitation Of Lycopene

Question

I have a question about anti-solvent precipitation in organic chemistry:

Is it possible to precipitate lycopene or other carotenes using this method?

I have been extracting carotenes like lycopene by Soxhlet method using acetone as solvent. I was wondering if it's possible to precipitate these compounds using the anti-solvent method.

If it's possible which anti-solvent would be more accurate, in the documents that I have been reading , it was mentioned methanol and other alcohols but I'm not sure if the acetone that I used in the extracting part would cause any interference.

Answer 1

If you have a solution, so long as you don't have too much of your "good", more solubilising solvent, you should be able to precipitate your terpene. Maybe not crystallise, but at least bring it out of solution. Lower alcohols and water act as anti-solvents for long chain hydrocarbons like lycopene. If this is for lab purification scale, another option is to simply evaporate your solvent and dissolve it in your crystallisation solvent of choice. For these longer chain polyenes, it may require a two solvent system anyway to crystallise the carotene of choice. Going back to one of your comments, the acetone will not interfere so long as it is the minimum amount. With the Soxhlet method you use, presumably you extract unwanted compounds also, so your experience of how easily these dissolve/precipitate will affect your choice of isolation method and specifically, the anti-solvent choice.