Empirical modeling of drying kinetics and microwave assisted extraction of bioactive compounds from Adathoda vasica and Cymbopogon citratus

Abstract

To highlight the shortcomings in conventional methods of extraction, this study investigates the efficacy of Microwave Assisted Extraction (MAE) toward bioactive compound recovery from pharmaceutically-significant medicinal plants, Adathoda vasica and Cymbopogon citratus. Initially, the microwave (MW) drying behavior of the plant leaves was investigated at different sample loadings, MW power and drying time. Kinetics was analyzed through empirical modeling of drying data against 10 conventional thin-layer drying equations that were further improvised through the incorporation of Arrhenius, exponential and linear-type expressions. 81 semi-empirical Midilli equations were derived and subjected to non-linear regression to arrive at the characteristic drying equations. Bioactive compounds recovery from the leaves was examined under various parameters through a comparative approach that studied MAE against Soxhlet extraction. MAE of A. vasica reported similar yields although drastic reduction in extraction time (210 s) as against the average time of 10 h in the Soxhlet apparatus. Extract yield for MAE of C. citratus was higher than the conventional process with optimal parameters determined to be 20 g sample load, 1:20 sample/solvent ratio, extraction time of 150 s and 300 Woutput power. Scanning Electron Microscopy and Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy were performed to depict changes in internal leaf morphology. (C) 2015 Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons. org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Keywords

Microwave assisted extraction; Drying kinetics; Empirical modeling; Extraction; Food; Medicinal plants

Published in

Alexandria Engineering Journal
2016, volume: 55, number: 1, pages: 141-150

SLU Authors

• Simha, Prithvi

  • Central European University
  • University of Manchester

Publication identifier

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aej.2015.12.020

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/88304