Extraction of saffron ingredients and its fingerprinting by nano-emulsion membranes

Abstract

<span style="font-size:9.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:" times="" new="" roman""="" lang="EN-GB">A novel approach has been introduced for the selective and tunable extraction as well as the fingerprinting of saffron solutes based upon the emulsion liquid membrane process. The objective of this method is optimizing the fingerprints, minimizing the solute variation, increasing the likelihood differences, obtaining the maximum extraction yield, and introducing the emulsion liquid membrane process in the fingerprinting extractions. The extractions are focused on the solutes of the interest including crocins, safranal and picrocrocin. Based upon the UV/Vis spectra in the range 230-530 nm, the component analysis of pre-processed data is conducted and the extraction parameters are optimized. The optimal conditions used for the best performance are surfactant’s type (Span 80), concentration (2.5 %), type of diluent (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">n</i>-decane) in membrane, phase and treat ratios (0.8 and 0.3), and mixing speed (300 rpm). The repeatability of fingerprints is determined using surfactant <span style="mso-bidi-font-weight:bold">4 (2.5 %wt) and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">n</i>-decane as the membrane phase.

</span></span>