Isolation, characterization and decolourization of Nano-curcumin for cosmetic industry

Abstract

Curcuminoids are one of the naturally occurring yellow pigments which consist of curcumin, dimethoxy curcumin and bisdimethoxy curcumin. Curcuma longa rhizome have been popularly used in traditional medicine and to some extent, it is one of the active ingredients in drugs. In this study, crude extract of curcuminoids was extracted from turmeric using various extraction techniques. The isolation of curcumin and separation of oil and resin was carried out by using different solvents of polar and nonpolar nature. We present here the study comprising of extraction of curcumin by various traditional methods and synthesis of nano-curcumin by green sonochemical method using natural Neem leaves extracts. The XRD images show that nano-curcumin of crystallite size as small as 28 nano meters is formed whereas decolorized curcumin synthesized by peroxide method shows crystallite size of 21 nm. A simple method of decolorization of nano curcumin using peroxide is explained. The 1H NMR of the same sample shows that during the decolourisation process, there is no observable change in structure but only change in colour from curcumin dark yellow to very pale yellow colour is observed.