I'm having difficulty recovering curcumin from my ethanolic extract. I tried reducing its solubility in the solution by slowly adding water, but the solid just crashed out of the solution in very fine particles and I'm unable to filter it out. I also read that the presence of oils in the extract make it very difficult to crystallize the curcumin, so I tried removing the oils from the turmeric with hexane first before extracting with ethanol.
Does anyone know of better and more efficient ways of recovering curcumin from the solution?
Thanks.
Dear Miguel Lawrence Keith Celebre if the amount of your sample is not too large, you could try column chromatography (check suitable solvents by TLC). You can also find useful articles on the purification of curcumin directly on RG, e.g.
Article Process Parameters In The Purification Of Curcumin By Coolin...
Article Purification of Curcumin from Ternary Extract-Similar Mixtur...
Article Separation and purification of curcumin preparation of morph...
Article Recycling Preparative High Performance Liquid Chromatography...
and more.
In the extraction process, the sample should be defated by extracting with non-polar solvent e.g. n-hexane to remove all oils and fats, any way you can separated by MPLC chromatography or preparative TLC. If the compound is insoluble in n-hexane try to use liquid-liquid extraction.
The curcumin crystals may be obtained by recrystallization with n-propanol.
Chen Jingwen this is the first time I've heard of n-propanol being used. Do I extract the turmeric with n-propanol directly instead of ethanol?
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