Reuse of Cornus officinalis nutlet for bioenergy

Abstract

As a traditional nourishing Chinese herbal medicine, Cornus officinalis Sieb. et Zucc. has a long history of application. At present, only the flesh of the fruit of Cornus officinalis is used as a medicine, which wastes a large quantity of ingredients in the nutlet. To improve the comprehensive utilization efficiency of the fruit’s nutlet, which could be used when there is a shortage of the plant’s fruit in the market, this study used Fourier transform-infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS), thermogravimetric (TG) analysis, pyrolysis-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (PY-GC-MS), and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) techniques to analyze the Cornus officinalis nutlet. The results showed that the active ingredients of Cornus officinalis nutlet have great medicinal value and could become a substitute for the fruit. After extracting the active ingredients, the residue can be used as a good biomass liquid fuel, providing reference for the future to replace fossil fuels. This study provides the scientific basis for the comprehensive utilization of high-quality resources for Cornus officinalis.

A comprehensive review of Cornus officinalis: health benefits, phytochemistry, and pharmacological effects for functional drug and food development

“…Flavonoid substances such as β-sitosterol, glucose, and sucrose were extracted from the leaves (43, 44), and the ethanolic extract of the leaves yielded approximately 30-40 active substances, including phenols, esters, ketones, tannins, and organic acids (as listed in Table 3) (38,51). Other studies have focused on the leaves, resulting in the extraction of three new iridoids, one of which exhibited inhibitory effects on the lung cancer cell line A-549 (52). Moreover, five substances with α-glucosidase inhibitory activity were isolated from the aqueous extract of C. officinalis fruits, named cornucadinoside A-E (1-5) (53).…”