Extraction of essential oils from lime (Citrus latifolia Tanaka) by hydrodistillation and supercritical carbon dioxide

Abstract

In this work lime essential oils were extracted by hydrodistillation and supercritical carbon dioxide. In the case of hydrodistillation, the parameters evaluated were extraction time and characteristics of the plant material. In supercritical extraction, the parameters evaluated were temperature, pressure, CO 2 flow, extraction time and material characteristics. Considering citral content, the best results for hydrodistillation were obtained with a distillation time of 3 hours using whole peels. The best results for supercritical extraction were found using 60ºC, 90 bar, at a CO 2 flow rate of 1 mL/ min for 30 minutes using milled peels. The best yields of lime oil were obtained by hydrodistillation (5.45% w/w) and supercritical extraction (7.93% w/w) for milled peels.

Chemical Composition and Antiproliferative Activity of Supercritical CO2 Extracts from Citrus Fruits

“…Additionally, γ-sitosterol, stigmasterol, and tengeretin as well as free fatty acids and their esters previously reported in immature dangyuja fruits (Lim et al, 2009), were also found in the supercritical extract of mature fruits in this study. A previous study on supercritical extracts of citrus fruit demonstrated that the extract contained higher levels of non-oxygenated compounds including limonene (Atti-Santos et al, 2005). Thus, the results presented in Table 1 clarify that the supercritical CO 2 extraction technique produced almost the same main volatile compounds as those obtained by conventional methods.…”

“…In the present study, the most important result was the chemical composition of the extracts. We found a larger number of volatile and non-volatile components together at the same time than extracted by either solvent extraction (Lim et al, 2009) or hydrodistillation (Atti-Santos et al, 2005) methods alone. Antiproliferative activity was evaluated by monitoring cell viability of treated cancer cells using a cell count or the reduction in the tetrazolium substrate to formazan.…”

“…Compared to conventional methods, this method is the most useful in terms of essential oil and polymethoxylated flavonoid yields from citrus fruits (Porta, et al, 1997;Li et al, 2007;Atti-Santos et al, 2005). The presence of polymethoxy flavone, unsaturated fatty acids, and phytosterols along with several terpenoids in citrus extracts are particularly important because they promote the anticancer effects.…”

Characterization of Volatile Compounds in the Essential Oil of Sweet Lime (Citrus limetta Risso)

“…The essential oils may be extracted through different methods whose use depends on the desired yield and quality and the location of the oil glands (Mazen, 2002). Some of these methods are: steam distillation, cold pressing, peel compression, hydrodistillation, and supercritical fluid extraction (Mazen, 2002;Frizzo et al, 2004;Gil and Sáez, 2005;Atti-Santos et al, 2005). After the extraction, the identification of the compounds in the oil is important; chromatography is the most-used alternative (Mondello et al, 2003).…”

Optimization of Headspace Solid-Phase Microextraction Conditions for the Identification of Volatiles Compounds from the Whole Fruit of Lemon, Lime, Mandarin and Orange

“…Headspacesolid phase microextraction (SPME) nowadays, is considered the method of choice for most of the volatile extraction in flavour chemistry/food [8] [9] and particularly in Citrus [10] [11]. There are many methods for obtaining citrus volatiles, such as citrus oil (essential oil) and these methods have been extensively reviewed [12] [13]. Unfortunately, the aroma of extracted oils rarely represents the delicate natural aroma of citrus, because of uncontrolled temperature during the steam distillation process [14].…”