Sodium hypochlorite/chloroform digestion

The common chemical methods for extraction of PHB are solvent extraction, chemical digestion using sodium hypochlorite, sodium hypochlorite and chloroform, surfactants, surfactant hypochlorite digestion, surfactant chelate digestion, chelate hydrogen peroxide treatment, selective dissolution of nonpolymer cell mass by proton etc. 

A classic method is to digest the PHB-containing cell culture with sodium hypochlorite and measure the turbidity of the suspension produced by release of the polymer granules. Alternatively the polymer can be extracted into chloroform solution and its infrared absorbance at 1728 cm determined quantitatively. Another spectroscopic method involves hydrolysing and dehydrating the polymer to crotonic acid with concentrated sulphuric acid and assaying this by conventional quantitative UV analysis. ... 

PHA recovery process was developed to obtain the benefits of both digestion methods using sodium hypochlorite and chloroform as solvent extraction. The combined method makes three separate phases, including hypochlorite solution at the upper phase, NPCM and undisrupted cells at... 

The use of dispersions of sodium hypochlorite and chloroform for simultaneous differential digestion of NCPM and migration of the released PHB, which is hydrophobic, into the organic phase. [194]. The authors used the method on recovery of PHB from both R. eutropha and a PHB-producing recombinant strain of E. coli [127]. 

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