Home – Home – Jornals – Chemistry for Sustainable Development 2008 number 5

We optimised the method of obtaining the monoammonium salt of glycyrrhizic acid (glycyram) from the roots of the Ural licorice ( Fisher) of Siberian populations. The method includes the following stages: extraction of the roots with a 0.5 % solution of NH₄OH, precipitation of the sum of acids with the help of concentrated H₂SO₄, subsequent re-extraction with a 1 % solution of H₂SO₄ in acetone, salting out the triammonium salt of glyccyrrhizic acid using a 25 % NH₄OH solution, transformation of this salt into the monoammonium salt (glycyram) by crystallization from glacial NH₄OH. Using this method, one may obtain the samples of glycyram with a purity of 85.2-87.5 % (according to the HPLC data). The glycyrrhizic acid content in the investigated samples of licorice roots is 2-4 %.