Optimized Extraction Of Patchouli Essential Oil From Pogostemon Cablin Benth. With Supercritical Carbon Dioxide

In this work, supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) was employed to fully utilize patchouli plant including the stems to extract patchouli oil. In the conventional extraction by steam distillation, patchouli stems are often underutilized and discarded as waste. Using Taguchi's orthogonal array method, the effect of pressure (10-20 MPa), temperature (35-45 degrees C) and CO2 flowrate (40-80 g/min) on SFE yield, antioxidant activity and patchoulol concentration from patchouli plant were evaluated. The SFE process conditions were optimized based on the selective yield of patchoulol as patchoulol is generally considered as an indicator of the patchouli oil quality. SFE with the optimized pressure of 15 MPa, temperature of 45 degrees C and CO2 flow rate of 60 g/min obtained yield, antioxidant activity and patchoulol concentration of 3.51 %, IC50:1.21 mg/mL and 0.2953 g patchoulol/g oil respectively. The results were compared with steam distillation where SFE shown significantly improved yield and antioxidant activity over the distillation process.