Purification of low-concentration phenazine-1-carboxylic acid from fermentation broth of Pseudomonas sp. M18 via free flow electrophoresis with gratis gravity.

The low-concentration phenazine-1-carboxylic acid (PCA) ( = 0.3 mM) extracted from fermentation broth of Pseudomonas sp. M18 was selected to be purified with a newly facile free flow electrophoresis (FFE) device with gratis gravity. Three factors of pH value and concentration of background buffer, and the cooling circle of FFE device were investigated for the purification of PCA in the FFE device. It was found that the pH value and concentration of background buffer had mild influences on the separation of PCA whether with cooling circle or not. However, the cooling circle had a much greater impact on the separation of PCA. The controlling of the band zone of PCA in FFE chamber would be difficult if without cooling circle, while the controlling would become easy if with cooling circle. Under the optimal conditions (10 mM pH 5.5 phosphate as background buffer, 30 mM pH 5.5 phosphate buffer as electrode solution, 5.46 mL/min background flux, 10 min residence time of injected sample, and 500 V), PCA could be continuously prepared from its impurities with relative high purity. The flux of sample injection was 115 μL/min, viz. 7 mL sample throughput per hour, and the recovery was up to 85%. All of the experiments indicated that the FFE technique was a good alternative tool for the study on natural biological control agents.