Abstract:

An aqueous two-phase system consisting of acetone, water and ammonium sulfate was developed for the purification of crude hesperidin extracted from orange peel using aqueous sodium carbonate solution. Effects of amount of ammonium sulfate addition, amount of crude hesperidin and pH on hesperidin extraction were studied. Results showed that an optimum extraction rate of hesperidin as high as 98.22% was obtained when the aqueous two-phase system consisting of 10 ml of 90% aqueous acetone and 10 ml of water containing 4.0 g of ammonium sulfate at pH 4 was used for treating 0.35 g of crude hesperidin. Thin layer chromatographic (TLC) analysis indicated that hesperidin was mainly partitioned into acetone phase with a Rf value close to that of hesperidin standard.

Key words: aqueous two-phase extraction system, hesperidin, ultraviolet spectrophotometry, orange peel, TLC