Optimization of Enzyme-Assisted Extraction of Flavonoids from Corn Husks
1
Department of Chemical Engineering, Materials and Environment, Sapienza University, 00184 Rome, Italy
2
Chemical Engineering Department, University of Cartagena, Cartagena 130015, Colombia
3
Department of Environmental Sciences, Universidad Francisco de Paula Santander, Av. Gran Colombia No. 12E-96, Cúcuta 540003, Colombia
4
Department of Civil, Environmental, Building Engineering and Chemistry, Polytechnic University of Bari, 70125 Bari, Italy
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Processes 2019, 7(11), 804; https://doi.org/10.3390/pr7110804
Received: 1 October 2019
/
Revised: 28 October 2019
/
Accepted: 29 October 2019
/
Published: 3 November 2019
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Green Separation and Extraction Processes)
Corn husks are an important byproduct of the corn processing industry. Although they are a rich source of bioactive compounds, especially flavonoids, corn husks are usually disposed of or used as animal feed. In this paper, we investigate their recovery by an enzyme-assisted extraction process consisting of a pretreatment of the plant material with cellulase followed by solvent extraction with aqueous ethanol. A four-factor, three-level Box–Behnken design combined with the response surface methodology was used to optimize the enzyme dosage (0.3–0.5 g/100 g), incubation time (1.5–2.5 h), liquid-to-solid ratio (30–40 mL g−1) and ethanol concentration in the solvent (60–80% v/v). Under the optimal conditions, about 1.3 g of total flavonoids per 100 g of dry waste were recovered. A statistical analysis of the results was performed to provide a quantitative estimation of the influence of the four factors, alone or in combination, on the extraction yields. Overall, the results from this study indicate that corn husks are a valuable source of flavonoids and that they can be easily recovered by a sustainable and environmentally friendly extraction process.
View Full-Text
▼
Show Figures
Figure 1
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
MDPI and ACS Style
Zuorro, A.; Lavecchia, R.; González-Delgado, Á.D.; García-Martinez, J.B.; L’Abbate, P. Optimization of Enzyme-Assisted Extraction of Flavonoids from Corn Husks. Processes 2019, 7, 804. https://doi.org/10.3390/pr7110804
AMA Style
Zuorro A, Lavecchia R, González-Delgado ÁD, García-Martinez JB, L’Abbate P. Optimization of Enzyme-Assisted Extraction of Flavonoids from Corn Husks. Processes. 2019; 7(11):804. https://doi.org/10.3390/pr7110804
Chicago/Turabian StyleZuorro, Antonio, Roberto Lavecchia, Ángel D. González-Delgado, Janet B. García-Martinez, and Pasqua L’Abbate. 2019. "Optimization of Enzyme-Assisted Extraction of Flavonoids from Corn Husks" Processes 7, no. 11: 804. https://doi.org/10.3390/pr7110804
Find Other Styles
Note that from the first issue of 2016, MDPI journals use article numbers instead of page numbers. See further details here.
