Microwave Assisted Hydrodistillation of Clinacanthus nutans

Microwave Assisted Hydrodistillation (MAHD) was used to extract Clinacanthus nutans (C.nutans) in order to take advantage on this novel extraction to evaluate the potential of MAHD. Different power of microwave such as 300W, 400W and 600W were investigated on extraction yield produced and compared with conventional hydrodistillation. Also, the effect of MAHD and HD extraction on chemical components of C.nutans extract were evaluated using GC-MS chromatography and to evaluate the mechanism of MAHD by verifying through first order and second order kinetic model. The condition of extraction was optimized at 6 g of plant sample, ratio of plant sample to solvent was kept at 1:14 (w/v) and extraction time of 80 min for MAHD and 120 min for HD. Higher yield, 3.33% was able to obtain through MAHD method for extraction time of 80 min at power of 300 W compared to conventional hydrodistillation (HD) which only produced 1.67% of oil yield. Second order kinetic model was proven to be a suitable model to simulate on basis of MAHD and HD experiment results. High coefficients of correlation (R2 ) were simulated by the second order model, which satisfactorily applied to the process. MAHD is proven to produce more quality components compared to HD when analysed by GC-MS.