Direct recovery of palm carotene by liquid-liquid extraction

Crude palm oil (CPO) contains the highest known amount of carotenoid among crops, but the harsh refining conditions of CPO degrade palm carotene. Liquid-liquid extraction (LLE) is a scalable extraction method that can be prospectively used in direct recovery of palm carotene. This study aimed to extract palm carotenes directly from CPO without disrupting the subsequent productions of palm oil derivatives. Organic solvents with low toxicity were first screened using experiments to assess the phase-forming ability and extraction performance. Solvation model based on density satisfactorily explained the tendency of biphasic system formation and affinity of β-carotene towards solvent mixture. From the screening outcomes, dimethyl sulfoxide and dichloromethane were adopted as solvent system because of the excellent performance of palm carotene extraction. After optimization, the optimal percentage recovery and selectivity of palm carotene were 40.63 % and 2.16, respectively. The total recovery of palm carotene increased up to 68.49 % by using multistage extraction approach.