Extraction and characterization of oil from moringa oleifera seeds using soxhlet extraction

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Date
2018-04-01
Authors
Khadijah Md Noh
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Abstract
Moringa oleifera is classified as one of the most valuable plants as most parts of this plant; root, bark, gum, leaf, and seed have their special usages. The oil extracted from M. oleifera seeds has been widely used in culinary, medicine and cosmetics. Soxhlet extraction method by using hexane as the extraction solvent has been widely used to extract the M. oleifera oil from its seed. However, the environmental and health concerns about hexane may limit its usage. In this research, heptane is used as the extraction solvent as this solvent is similar to hexane but it does not have the environmental and health concerns associated with hexane. Effects of extraction temperature, extraction time, particles size of the seeds, and solvent to solid ratio towards the extraction yield were investigated. The oil yield varied with the changing of the parameters. Temperature between 85 ᴼC to 105 ᴼC, extraction time between 2 hours to 4.5 hours, solvent to solid ratio between 7.5:1 to 15:1 and seeds size between 0.5 mm to 2.0 mm were used during the investigation. The optimum parameters that give highest oil yield of 40.10 % were temperature at 100°C, 4 hour extraction time, particle sizes less than 0.50 mm and solvent to solid ratio of 15:1. The M. oleifera seeds were characterized before and after the extraction process by using Scanning Electron Microscopic (SEM), Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) and elemental analyzer tests. Physical and chemical characterizations of the extracted oil were analyzed. Oleic acid, palmitic acid and oxalic acid were detected with oleic acid having the dominant percentage of about 65.90%. M. oleifera oil extracted was yellow in color and has density of 0.905 g/mL. The refractive index and viscosity values were 1.46705 and 65cP, respectively. Saponification value determined was 198.63 mg KOH/g oil. From the kinetics study, the kinetics second-order extraction model fitted well with the experimental data with correlation coefficient (R2) almost 1.00. The existence of phytochemicals in the extracted M. oleifera oil was tested and the results showed that the flavonoids, saponins, phenol, tannins and terpenoids exist in the oil. From the investigation, it was found that heptane is an effective solvent for the extraction of M. oleifera oil using Soxhlet extraction method.
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