ABSTRACT
Phenols are secondary plant metabolites, widely spread throughout the plant kingdom. Substantial developments in research focused on the extraction, identification, and quantification of phenolic compounds as medicinal and dietary molecules. Organic solvent extraction is the main method used to extract phenolics. Microwave-assisted extraction (MAE) is one of the efficient extraction process among all of the modern techniques. The process of extraction of phenolic compounds from Ceylon olive was optimized using conventional heat reflux method and MAE process. The independent variables like temperature (50–100 °C), time (60–240 min), solid-to-solvent ratio (1:10 to 1:50), and solvent concentration (20%–100%) were taken for conventional heat reflux method. Whereas, for MAE process the independent variables were taken as microwave power (300–600 W), irradiation time (30–90 s), solid-to-solvent ratio (1:10 to 1:30), and solvent concentration (50%–70%). Optimized value of the total phenolic content for conventional heat reflux method and MAE were 239.256 and 315.247 mg GAE/g dry weight of the sample, respectively. Time and solid-to-solvent ratio require for the conventional heat reflux method were 72.42 min and 33.82 mL/g, respectively; while in MAE the time was only 90 s and solid-to-solvent ratio was 19.53 mL/g. Also, the high-performance liquid chromatography result 54shows a reasonable increase in phenolic compound extract by microwave-assisted extraction.
