Novel organic base-assisted mechanochemical extraction of water-soluble and fat-soluble compounds from medicinal crop

Abstract

A novel organic base-assisted (OB-assisted) mechanochemical extraction (MCE) method was established for the efficient extraction of water- and fat-soluble compounds from Ophiopogon japonicus. This study investigated the influence of OB type, amount of OB, grinding time, solid-liquid ratio, vortexing time, and pH. The optimal conditions obtained from the response surface methodology are 124.16 μL of n-butylamine, a grinding time of 6.06 min, and pH of 10.59. In addition, the method showed a good linear relationship (R2 > 0.99), high accuracy (relative standard deviation > 4.44%), and an acceptable recovery rate (89.99–110.52%). The results of scanning electron microscopy suggested that mechanochemical processes may destroy the cell walls and convert the target compounds into water-soluble salt forms in the presence of added OBs. Compared with other methods, the proposed MCE does not use any organic solvent in the extraction medium and reduces the extraction time. It was successfully applied to extract flavonoids and saponins from Ophiopogon japonicus.