System and Method for Emulsion Breaking and Recovery of Biological Elements

Abstract

An embodiment of a method for extracting biological material from an emulsion is described that comprises the steps of a) breaking an emulsion comprising a plurality of aqueous droplets in a continuous phase of an oil using a solvent to produce a combined aqueous-oil mixture, where the solvent disrupts the aqueous droplets which release a plurality of biological elements each immobilized on a substrate into the combined aqueous-oil mixture; b) introducing an inorganic salt to the combined aqueous-oil mixture causing a phase separation of the mixture into a first phase comprising an aqueous solution and the biological elements and a second phase comprising the solvent and the oil; c) extracting the first phase from the second phase; and d) collecting the substrate immobilized biological elements from the first phase.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.