Enantiomer separation and the isolation of natural products from plants pose challenging separation problems resulting from the similarity of molecules and the number of compounds present in synthesis or extract mixtures. Furthermore, limited theory is available to predict productivities for possible alternative separation techniques. The application and performance of chromatography- and crystallization-based processes are demonstrated for various case studies devoted to isolating valuable target compounds from complex initial mixtures. In all cases, the first emphasis is set to determine the process-specific phase equilibria to identify feasible process options. For all examples considered, yields and productivities are evaluated and compared for different scenarios. Guidelines to approach and solve similar separation tasks are given.
Keywords: chromatography; coupled processes; crystallization; enantiomers; extraction; natural products.