Production of Capsaicin from Chili Pepper Using Experimental Work and Process Simulation
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Date
2018-10-13
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
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Publisher
Addis Ababa University
Abstract
This research paper studied the development of an optimized process for the soxhlet
extraction of capsaicin from chili pepper (Capsicum Annum), collected from local market.
Experiments had performed to get maximum yield by utilization of ethanol as a solvent.
Experimentation covered three factorials to evaluate significance among temperature,
solvent concentration and time. The extraction temperature was varied as 85℃, 90℃, and
95℃, the solvent concentration was 79v/v, 89v/v and 99v/v and the extraction time was
varied as 3hr, 4hr, and 5hr respectively. The yield of capsaicinoid was response variables.
ANOVA was applied to find significance among variables and predict optimum conditions
through a regression model, P-value obtained from the model was less than 0.0001, which
implies that it is highly significant. The process parameters investigated in this study have
a significance effect on the yield. Reduced particle sizes produced a higher yield of
capsaicinoid as long as agglomeration in the extractor did not occur. The maximum yield
obtained was 16.57% at a temperature of 90℃, and extraction time of 4hr and solvent
concentration was 89% ethanol. The product obtained was researched for its physiochemical
properties indicated that the refractive index was 1.4967, the moisture and
volatile matter was 3.5%, the density was 990Kg/m
, the specific gravity was 1.01, and the
kinematic viscosity was 3.43*10
3
2
m
−6
. Process simulation in Aspen Plus
TM
s
was carried out
to evaluated independent variables and to perform sensitivity analysis. The extraction
process was modeled and simulated using Aspen Plus
. The result from the simulation
indicated models more or less better than the experiment process.
Description
Keywords
Chili pepper, Solvent extraction, Simulation, Characterization