Extraction of valuable phytocompounds from medicinal plants of Clinacanthus Nutants Lindau by solvent-free microwave technique

Medicinal plant is one of the ancient ways used in traditional medicine practices. It is known by the medicine field to contain a valuable phytocompounds such as alkaloids, terpenoids, carotenoids and many more. One of the medicinal plants that being used widely in South-East Asia is Clinacanthus Nutants Lindau also known as Sabah Snake Grass. There are a few methods used to extract valuable phytocompounds and mostly used solvents included in the mixtures. The extraction of valuable phytocompounds from Sabah Snake Grass used solvent such as n-hexane, dichloromethane, ethyl acetate and ethanol which actually a high performances liquid chromatography. The solvents used actually helped to classify the chemical compounds within the plant, but it is actually had side effect. The method that used organic solvents, such as ethanol and n-hexane are actually toxic and not suitable to be used for food production or to be included in pharmaceutical field. Furthermore, the addition of solvents will produce a byproduct that can affect the environment and classified as chemical waste after being used as solvents. Therefore, it is important to find a better method that exclude solvents thus reduce the production of hazardous substance to the environment and suitable to be used in food and pharmaceutical industry. The solvents used for this research was distilled water. Process parameter was pursuing out under three different type power (160 W, 240 W and 360 W) and three different solvent-to-feed ratio which is (1:10, 1:20 and 1:30). These three ratios acted differently as the time needed is different between ratio 1:10, 1:20 and 1:30. The increase of solvent requires longer time for the heat to be supplied to the samples. Oher than that, the data shown that the extraction yield increase with as the power of the microwave increase. The highest yield observed was 28.91% (Power =360 W, S/F=1:30).