Artemisia annua organic solvent extract, processed by supercritical CO₂

Abstract

BACKGROUND Artemisia annua L. extraction is traditionally performed using hexane; the process is simple, but not selective. In this work, a strategy to concentrate artemisinin and the other similar active principles in the final extract is proposed, combining cheapness of maceration and selectivity of SC‐CO2 processing. RESULTS Hexane extraction produced a solid, waxy extract with a yield of 3.3% w/w with respect to the starting vegetable material. Then, SC‐CO2 processing of this solid extract was performed operating at 0.8 kg h−1 SC‐CO2 flow rate and at different operative parameters. Very selective conditions were found operating at 90 bar and 50°C, obtaining a final product containing more than 71% w/w of active compounds (artemisinin, artemisin and dehydroartemisinin). CONCLUSION Using this approach, a product more than 2.6 times richer in artemisinin than the one obtained by conventional techniques and about 2 times richer than direct CO2 extraction, was obtained. Another relevant result is that the overall process scheme is cheaper than direct CO2 extraction, since a high pressure extractor about 20 times smaller can be used, to process the waxy product obtained by hexane extraction. © 2018 Society of Chemical Industry

Elimination of tryptamines from green coffee by supercritical CO2 extraction

“…A schematic plant representation is reported in Baldino and Reverchon. [ 14 ] Experiments were performed in duplicates.…”

A review on the latest advances in extraction and analysis of artemisinin

“…A strategy for increasing artemisinin yield by combining a traditional maceration and SFE was reported by Baldino and Reverchon . The aerial parts of A. annua were macerated with n ‐hexane to obtain a crude extract, which was further extracted with supercritical CO 2 extraction to obtain artemisinin‐enriched extract .…”

“…A strategy for increasing artemisinin yield by combining a traditional maceration and SFE was reported by Baldino and Reverchon . The aerial parts of A. annua were macerated with n ‐hexane to obtain a crude extract, which was further extracted with supercritical CO 2 extraction to obtain artemisinin‐enriched extract . This hybrid approach produced the final product that contained 71% of active compounds, which was more than twice the concentration that can be obtained from optimised direct SFE, and 2.6 times richer in active principles than the traditional solvent extraction could produce.…”

“…ultrasoundassisted extraction, utilising various computational tools and mathematical modelling, has been observed in recent years. During the period from 2017 to present, several protocols of ultrasound-assisted extraction and SFE of artemisinin (1) have been reported (Table 1), [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21] which will be discussed briefly in the following subsections.…”

“…Cao et al 21 reported an ultrasound-assisted extraction method The aerial parts of Artemisia annua was macerated with n-hexane to obtain a crude extract, which was further extracted with supercritical CO 2 extraction to obtain artemisinin-enriched extract. 7 Extraction based on model-assisted process design A systematic process design, based on laboratory-scale experiments and miniplant-scale pilot, for the extraction and purification of artemisinin (1) from A. annua. 8 Artemisinin (1) was extracted from A. annua by percolation using acetone.…”