Study on Ultrasonic Assisted - Precipitation Method Combined Purification of Tea Saponin

Commercial crude tea saponin as raw material, ultrasonic assisted extraction technology of tea saponin was investigated. Five influence factors of ethanol concentration, extraction temperature, extraction time, solid-liquid ratio, ultrasonic power on the extraction of tea saponin were studied in detail. Orthogonal experiment through the single factor experiment design, the experimental results show that the optimum operating conditions for the ethanol concentration of 80%, solid-liquid ratio 1: 40, extraction temperature 40°C, ultrasonic power of 300W, ultrasonic extraction time 45 minutes. Under the optimum conditions obtained tea saponin extract with ethanol- acetone precipitation method is further purified, tea saponin content increased from 52.1% to 93.6%. The result indicated that the purity of the tea saponin could be effectively improved through the ultrasonic assisted- precipitation combined method.