Impact of ohmic-assisted hydrodistillation on kinetics data, physicochemical and biological properties of Prangos ferulacea Lindle. essential oil: Comparison with conventional hydrodistillation

Abstract

Abstract The effect of ohmic-assisted hydrodistillation (OAHD) as an emerging technology, on the extraction kinetics and characteristics of the Prangos ferulacea Lindle. essential oil was studied, and the results were compared to hydrodistillation (HD). According to the results, to achieve a similar yield OAHD required half the time required by the HD. GC/MS results indicated considerable differences in the quantity of the main components, and selective extraction of limonene and (E)-β-ocimene was obtained through OAHD (13.32% and 23.60%, respectively). This could be attributed to the rapid increase in temperature as a result of internal heating and electroporation occurrence due to electrical current passing through the material. The Prangos ferulacea essential oils exhibited antibacterial and antioxidant activities. The electrical energy consumption for the OAHD was almost one half of that consumed by the conventional HD extraction. Based on equivalent CO2 emission, OAHD may be considered as a “novel green technology”. Industrial relevance Application of emerging thermal technologies such as ohmic heating has been introduced to essential oil extraction and presented some desirable advantages over the conventional methods, such as effective heating, fast energy transfer, time saving and low operating costs, and no adverse alterations in chemical compositions. In this study, ohmic-assisted hydrodistillation was used to extract the essential oils of Prangos ferulacea. The results of this study showed that not only a selective extraction of some components can achieve via ohmic procedure, but also it is a more economical and environmentally friendly procedure that can be considered as a green technology.