Determination of Camphor and Borneol in Traditional Chinese Medicines by Microwave-assisted Extraction and Gas Chromatography with Flame Ionization Detector

Abstract

In this work, microwave-assisted extraction (MAE) followed by gas chromatography with flame ionization detector (GC–FID) was developed for the rapid determination of camphor and borneol in three traditional Chinese medicines (TCM): Chrysanthemi indici, Flos Chrysanthemi indici and Amomum villosum lour. The optimal MAE conditions obtained were: acetone for solvent, with solvent having sample ratio of 12:1 (v/w); microwave power of 380 W, and an irradiation time of 4 min. Method validations were also studied. To demonstrate the proposed method, ultrasonic-assisted extraction (UAE) and steam distillation (SD), followed by GC-FID, were used to analyze camphor and borneol in thethree TCMs. The close results were obtained by the three methods. The results showed that the proposed MAE–GC–FID is a simple, rapid, and reliable method for quantitative analysis of camphor and borneol in TCM, and is also a potential tool for TCM quality assessment.