ABSTRACT
The compound betaine (trirnethylglycine; Me3WCH2COi) has a wide variety of applications ( 1 ). These include animal feed supplement, enzyme stabilizer, pharmaceutical intermediate and personal care ingredient. Currently natural source betaine is extracted as a product in the de-sugaring of beet molasses ( 1 ). The most common synthetic route for betaine is by the reaction of an excess of trimethylamine with monochloroacetic acid to give a mixture of betaine and trimethylamine hydrochloride (2). A variant of this method is to react trimethylamine with an alkali or alkaline earth metal salt of monochloroacetic acid. In either case there are disadvantages since the product is contaminated with salts such as sodium chloride, trimethylamine hydrochloride or trimethylarnmonium chloroacetate (3). Another route to betaine is the biochemical oxidation of choline salts [Me3NCH2CH20Ht X using the enzyme choline oxidase (4). This is not a synthetic method, but is rather used as an analytical method for choline by detecting the amount of hydrogen peroxide produced in the reaction.
