Abstract: In order to develop an economical and efficient approach to prepare purified numb-taste compounds from Zanthoxylum bungeanum, molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) were synthesized by bulk polymerization, using the numb-taste components of Zanthoxylumas bungeanum as the template molecule and methylacrylic acid (MAA) as the functional monomer in this work, and they were used to develop a solid phase extraction (SPE) column. The experimental results of adsorption kinetics showed that the adsorption of the numb-taste components on MIPs could reach equilibrium in 12 h and the recognition factor (α) was 3.05. The adsorption isothermal curves of MIPs and non-molecularly imprinted polymers (NIPs) showed that the adsorption quantity of the numb-taste components into the cavity formed by MIPs was higher than into that formed by NIPs. Two distinct binding sites were observed between the imprinted polymer and the template (the numb-taste components). The dissociation constants (Kd) for the binding sites were 1.172 × 10-2 and 3.585 × 10-2 mg/mL, and the apparent maximum adsorption capacity (Qmax) were 11.133 and 15.802 mg/g, respectively. The numb-taste compounds with 94.09% purity from Zanthoxylumas bungeanum were obtained using the MIP-based SPE column developed.

Key words: numb-taste components of Zanthoxylum bungeanum, molecularly imprinted polymers, solid phase extraction, extraction and purification