Design and optimization of ultrasound assisted extraction of curcumin as an effective alternative for conventional solid liquid extraction of natural products.

The first step in the qualitative and quantitative analysis of medicinal plant constituents is the extraction step. Ideally, an extraction procedure should be exhaustive with respect to the constituents to be analyzed, rapid, simple, and for routine analysis amenable to automation. Usually, the traditional techniques require long extraction times, with more consumption of energy resources and organic solvent, have low efficiency and are often unsafe for thermolabile botanicals. The Taguchi based optimization technique was adapted for the process optimization of ultrasound assisted extraction (UAE) of Curcuma longa to identify the effect of four major factors namely, extraction time, solvent viscosity, grinding degree and solvent volume on the percentage extraction of curcumin. The reproducibility and recovery of the method was also investigated. The efficiency of the new extraction method was then compared with conventional solid liquid extraction procedures. Using this novel method, long hours of conventional Soxhlet extraction were cut down to 70 minutes of UAE with greater reproducibility and recovery. The study clearly shows that this method can be effectively utilized for cutting down long extraction time of botanicals to just a few minutes without the aid of heat.