Alpha mangostin optimized extraction by supercritical carbon dioxide technique

Recently, there is an increasing interest to include plant derived compounds both in cosmetic and nutraceutical products. However, majority of these compounds are hard to isolate and some biologically active compounds are usually in low concentration. Furthermore, conventional extraction processes are mostly time consuming with high usage of toxic solvent. Thus, carbon dioxide (CO2) which generally recognized as safe solvent can be a promising alternative to extract the plant derived compounds. In this study, supercritical carbon dioxide (SC-CO2) extraction was compared with conventional soxhlet extraction for the extraction of α- mangostin from pericarps of Garcinia mangostana. The optimization was carried out using Box-Behnken Design. Three parameters were manipulated in SC-CO2 optimization process which included extraction pressure (20 to 30 MPa), extraction temperature (40 to 60 °C) and percentage of ethanol as co solvent (0 to 3%) at fixed sample particle size of 0.10-0.50 mm and 4 mL/min of CO2 flow rate. The analysis was carried out by using high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). The optimum conditions for α-mangostin extraction (58% w/w) was at 20 MPa of pressure, temperature of 45 °C and 3% of ethanol as co solvent. Further isolation of SC-CO2 extracts using column chromatography succesfully isolated pure α- mangostin (1.42% w/w) based from spectral data of HPLC chromatogram, 1H and 13C nuclear magnetic resonance and mass spectrometry. It was found that SC-CO2 was more superior in terms of less toxic solvent used and more yield of α-mangostin extracted compared with the conventional and traditional soxhlet extraction technique.