Elution–extrusion counter‐current chromatographic separation and theoretical mechanism of antioxidant from Robinia pseudoacacia flower

Robinia pseudoacacia flowers have attracted much attention because of numerous bioactivities. In this study, its extract showed the potential scavenging ability for 2,2′‐azinobis‐(3‐ethylbenzthiazoline‐6‐sulphonate) and 1,1‐diphenyl‐2‐picrylhydrazyl free radicals. Under the guidance of antioxidant activity, the antioxidant extract was enriched by liquid‐liquid extraction. The partition coefficients of the two main components in antioxidant extracts differed greatly, so in this study, elution‐extrusion counter‐current chromatography with the solvent system of n ‐hexane‐ethyl acetate‐methanol‐water (2.5:5:2.5:5, v/v) was used to enhance the separation efficiency, and the two main components were successfully obtained. Among them, kaempferol showed strong antioxidant activity, which can be responsible for the activity of the extract. In order to deeply understand the antioxidant mechanism of kaempferol, the thermodynamics, frontier molecular orbital, and kinetics of scavenging free radicals were investigated by density functional theory. The results showed that 4′‐OH in kaempferol was the most active group, which can scavenge free radicals by hydrogen atom transfer in non‐polar solvents and activate 3‐OH to generate double hydrogen atom transfer in the gas phase. But in polar solvents, it was more inclined to clear radicals through single electron transfer and proton transfer. The kinetic result showed that kaempferol needed 9.17 kcal/mol of activation energy to scavenge free radicals.