A benign process for the recovery of solanesol from tomato leaf waste
Marjan Arab,
Bahareh Bahramian,
Aaron Schindeler,
Ali Fathi,
Peter Valtchev,
Robyn McConchie,
Fariba Dehghani
Affiliations
Marjan Arab
The University of Sydney, School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Sydney, 2006, NSW, Australia; The University of Sydney, Sydney Institute of Agriculture, School of Life and Environmental Science, Sydney, 2015, NSW, Australia
Bahareh Bahramian
The University of Sydney, School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Sydney, 2006, NSW, Australia; The University of Sydney, Centre for Excellence in Advanced Food Enginomics, Sydney, 2006, NSW, Australia
Aaron Schindeler
The University of Sydney, School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Sydney, 2006, NSW, Australia; Orthopaedic Research & Biotechnology, The Children's Hospital at Westmead, Locked Bag 4001, Sydney, 2145, NSW, Australia
Ali Fathi
The University of Sydney, School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Sydney, 2006, NSW, Australia
Peter Valtchev
The University of Sydney, School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Sydney, 2006, NSW, Australia; The University of Sydney, Centre for Excellence in Advanced Food Enginomics, Sydney, 2006, NSW, Australia
Robyn McConchie
The University of Sydney, School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Sydney, 2006, NSW, Australia; The University of Sydney, Sydney Institute of Agriculture, School of Life and Environmental Science, Sydney, 2015, NSW, Australia; The University of Sydney, Centre for Excellence in Advanced Food Enginomics, Sydney, 2006, NSW, Australia
Fariba Dehghani
The University of Sydney, School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Sydney, 2006, NSW, Australia; The University of Sydney, Centre for Excellence in Advanced Food Enginomics, Sydney, 2006, NSW, Australia; Corresponding author.
Solanesol, the precursor for the synthesis of coenzyme Q10, is currently recovered from tobacco leaves by conventional extraction techniques that require multiple purification steps and a large amount of organic solvents. We recently identified tomato leaves as an alternative source of solanesol and hypothesized that a high-pressure CO2 extraction could be used as a clean extraction process. The effect of CO2 pressure and temperature on the extraction of solanesol was determined to achieve high yield and purity. It was found that solanesol could be extracted efficiently by subcritical CO2 at 25 °C from tomato leaves. The extract contained 40% solanesol and other active compounds such as vitamin K1. A higher level of purity of 93% was achieved using a secondary purification step. Different conventional methods for solanesol extraction was compared to determine the most efficient technique for production of solanesol from tomato leaf. The highest yield of solanesol was achieved at nearly 1% dry weight with using subcritical CO2, which was superior to conventional methods.
