Modeling and Optimization of the Operating Conditions of Marrubium vulgare L. Essential Oil Extraction Process: Kinetic Parameters Estimation through Genetic Algorithms

Abstract

Advanced control and optimization of extraction processes are very important in the field of chemical engineering for the development of processes arising in high yield with minimal costs of time and energy. The main contributions of the current study lie in the following aspects: the first deals with the experimental study of hydrodistillation extraction method performed on a medicinal plant (Marrubium vulgare L.) as well as the optimization of the different parameters influencing the extraction yield, such as heating, drying and grinding the plant and solvent to solid ratio, in order to determine the operating conditions favorable to the realization of the extraction process, resulting in high yield, the second phase is dependent on the first, which is devoted to the mathematical modeling by exploiting three models from the literature. Furthermore, the parameters estimation of the kinetic models was carried out using genetic algorithms. The obtained coefficients of correlation and the root mean square error, show that predicted and experimental data were in good agreement.