Membraneless dialysis of strontium in aqueous liquid-liquid milk-pectin system

Abstract

Binding of added strontium by milk proteins under native conditions was investigated using pectin of various degrees of esterification. The partition of strontium, as well as cesium and europium, in aqueous two-phase milk-pectin system, is discussed in terms of “membraneless dialysis” and described by Donnan equilibria, and compared with the distribution between cation exchanger and milk, artificial milk serum, or pectin solutions. When going from pectin with a degree of esterification D.E.=93.2 to 61.4, the distribution of strontium decreases for about 40% in favor of pectin phase and this was explained by a relatively lower degree of dissociation of free carboxyle groups of pectin. The low-molecular fraction of added strontium in milk was assessed from Dowex 50×8 sorption data to be 31%, and that of cesium and europium 58% and 40%, respectively. However, distribution ratio of strontium and europium in milk/pectin system is much higher than it would correspond to the ion exchanger adsorption data.