Extraction And Purification Of High Purity Teasaponin

In the camellia cake, the content of tea saponin is rich. Tea saponin is a functional substance. It has surface activity and biological activity. Tea saponin is a good non-ionic surfactant such as emulsifying, wetting, dispersing, solubilizing and other surfactants. Currently, chemical surfactants have been used as toiletries in the market. It is shown that chemical surfactants not only stimulate the skin, but also cause eutrophication of water bodies. Therefore, finding a kind of natural surface active agent as raw materials to produce products is a hotspot of current research.In this research, Camellia cake was used as the raw material. The process of extraction, purification and surface-active properties of tea saponin were investigated. Tea saponin was identified by Infrared Spectroscopy.(1) Study on extraction process of tea saponin. Tea saponin was extracted from camellia cake by Ethanol-water. During this process, the effect of ethanol concentration, time, liquid to solid ratio, and temperature were investigated. Lastly, optimal conditions were found by the orthogonal experiment of L9(34). The optimal conditions were as follows: extraction time was 2h, ethanol concentration was 30%, temperature was 80℃, liquid to solid ratio was 20:1. The extraction yield was 18.89% under the optimal conditions.(2) The preliminary purification of tea saponin by using flocculation. The optimum flocculation process conditions were shown as follows: the concentration of teasaponin was 0.8%, flocculation was chitosan, flocculant addition was 6%, flocculating time was 3h. In this case, the impurity removal was 30.53% and tea saponin loss rate was 5.52%.(3) The purification of tea saponin by Microfiltration-Nanofiltration. This method has the advantages of simple operations, high degree of continuity and liable industrialization. The operation process of microfiltration-membrane: membrane pore size was 0.03μm, the operating pressure was 0.2MPa, washed twice. The operation process of nanofiltration-membrane: molecular weight cut-off was 800 Dal. In this case, the solution of tea saponin was concentrated about 5 times. The product was light yellow. Its purity was 86.7% and product yield was 65.4%.(4) Surface activity of tea saponin sample was investigated. The critical micelle concentration was about 0.5%. Foamability and foam stability of tea saponin were good. Samples were identified by IR.