Supercritical carbon dioxide anti-solvent micronization of lycopene extracted and chromatographic purified from Momordica charantia L. aril

Abstract

Bitter melon aril is the tissue surrounding the seeds which turns into bright red when the melon is ripen. The ripe bitter melon aril could be an alternative source of nature lycopene for human consumption if proper extraction, purification, and formulation were applied. Ultrasonic extraction and reverse phase chromatography were employed to isolate and purify lycopene from the arils of bitter gourds. The concentration of lycopene increased from 13.6% in the extract obtained ultrasonically using hexane to 98.1% in the elution fraction that was obtained using an ethanol-to-acetone ratio of five to one. Then, the chromatographic purified lycopene was micronized using supercritical carbon dioxide anti-solvent (SAS) process. Under the best condition of SAS process tested in this study, ∼97% recovery of lycopene was achieved and the obtained particles were in the sub nanometer range with a flaky morphology. This study successfully proved that column fractionation coupled with SAS is a useful process to produce purified and micronized lycopene extracted from ripe bitter melon aril.