Separation of Oleoresin from Nutmeg Using Ultrasound Assisted Extraction and Hexane as Solvent

Abstract Indonesia has many herbs and spices that function as ingredients for making herbal medicine or for cooking. Nutmeg (Myristica fragrans) is an Indonesia’s origin plant that has many health benefits. It produces specific flavors come from its bioactive compounds, namely oleoresin. Oleoresin can be extracted from nutmeg to get the concentrated compounds; hence it can be applied easily as the ingredient of food and beverage products. Ultrasonic assisted extraction (UAE) is applied in this research since it has higher yield compared to other extraction methods. This research is aimed to optimize the process condition of ultrasonic assisted extraction of nutmeg to get the good qualities of oleoresin. Solvent used in this research was hexane with extraction temperatures of 39, 45, 52 °C, and extraction times of 30, 45 and 60 minutes. Ratio between nutmeg and solvent were 5:100, 10:100 and 15:100. Frequency used was 45 kHz. The results showed that the optimum process condition to separate oleoresin from nutmeg were at extraction temperature of 52 °C, extraction time of 60 minutes and ratio between nutmeg and hexane of 5:100. This optimized process condition produced yield 62% of extracted oleoresin. Antioxidant activity and phenol content of this optimized oleoresin were 44,78% and 0,11 ppm respectively.