Biorefining of wheat bran for the purification of ferulic acid

Feruloyl esterase, a versatile enzyme has been used for extracting an abundant phenolic acid, viz, ferulic acid (FA) from destarched wheat bran. The study probes into the dependency of various parameters including enzyme loading, reaction time, pH and temperature on the extracted amount of ferulic acid. Statistical optimization of the process improved the extraction yield by 2.5 times and obtained a maximum of 34.6% of total alkali releasable ferulic acid was extracted and when the process is scaled up in a packed column reactor, it was able to extract 32.5% within12 h. The study has also focused on finding a good adsorbent for the purification of ferulic acid, which ended up in the use of AMBERLITE XAD4 resin owing to its capacity of binding 49.9 mg FA/g resin and obtained an impressive 99.5% recovery using methanol as an eluent.