Extraction of Peppermint Essential Oils and Lipophilic Compounds: Assessment of Process Kinetics and Environmental Impacts with Multiple Techniques

Abstract

Consumers are becoming more mindful of their well-being. Increasing awareness of the many beneficial properties of peppermint essential oil (EO) has significantly increased product sales in recent years. Hydrodistillation (HD), a proven conventional method, and a possible alternative in the form of microwave-assisted hydrodistillation (MWHD) have been used to isolate peppermint EO. Standard Soxhlet and alternatively supercritical fluid (SFE), microwave-assisted, and ultrasound-assisted extraction separated the lipid extracts. The distillations employed various power settings, and the EO yield varied from 0.15 to 0.80%. The estimated environmental impact in terms of electricity consumption and CO2 emissions suggested that MWHD is an energy efficient way to reduce CO2 emissions. Different extraction methods and solvent properties affected the lipid extract yield, which ranged from 2.55 to 5.36%. According to the corresponding values of statistical parameters, empiric mathematical models were successfully applied to model the kinetics of MWHD and SFE processes.

Essential Oils and Their Individual Components in Cosmetic Products

“…The low toxicity and chemical inertness of supercritical CO 2 make it the most common supercritical fluid used for extraction of natural products. Some examples of the application of supercritical fluids to the isolation of essential oils can be found in the extraction of oil from Moringa oleifera seeds [67], rosemary [68], peppermint [69], or cardamom [70]. Furthermore, the extraction using supercritical fluids can also be exploited for enhancing the essential oil quality, through fractionation and determination processes [56].…”

Design Process and Economic Evaluation of an Innovative Healing Plaster in Gel made from Eucalyptus Globulus Essential Oil

“…After establishing the suggested proportion of these components, the diagram flowsheet was made according to the same patent considering the product would be commercialized as a gel in tubes of 50 g. All the steps are represented in Figure 1, followed by their description. Although more recent techniques could be used to extract the essential oil, which have advantages over traditional hydrodistillation, the use of the hydrodistillation technique was preferred because it is a more well-known and robust method (Radivojac et al 2021). It consists of using water or steam as an extraction fluid that allows the removal of the oil from the leaves (Aramrueang, Asavasanti, and Khanunthong 2019).…”

The Influence of Microwave Treatments on Bioactive Compounds and Antioxidant Capacity of Mentha piperita L.

“…Microwave-assisted extraction (MAE) is a technique in which microwaves are applied to accelerate the extraction of compounds, for example from peppermint leaves, thus achieving a higher extraction speed with reduced processing costs. The microwaves heat the cell walls, which allows the component compounds to flow into the organic solvent used [ 13 ]. Kohari et al, (2020) [ 14 ] applied solvent-free microwave extraction to Mentha arvensis L. in order to obtain essential oils and demonstrated that this method is more efficient than traditional hydrodistillation extraction.…”

“…Most studies focus on the application of microwaves as a technique for extracting essential oils from peppermint [ 13 , 16 , 24 , 25 ]. The novelty of this study consists in the application of microwaves with the aim of making the extraction process of bioactive compounds such as polyphenols and peppermint pigments more efficient.…”