Comparison of yields and quality of nutmeg butter obtained by extraction of nutmeg rind by soxhlet and supercritical carbon dioxide (SC-CO2)

Nutmeg is a native South East Asian plant which has medicinal properties. In this work, supercritical extraction was studied in order to obtain experimental data of the influence of pressure, temperature and particle size and in comparison to soxhlet extraction. Supercritical extraction was conducted at operating temperatures of 40, 50 and 60 °C, operating pressures of 20.7, 27.6, 34.5 and 41.4 MPa and dynamic extraction time was 90 min. The effect of three different sieved particle sizes ⩽0.500, ⩽1 mm and ⩽2 mm on the extraction yield was examined. The results show that the highest yield was 38.8 g oil/100 g sample obtained under extraction temperature of 60 °C, pressure 41.4 MPa using particle size of ⩽0.5 mm. Soxhlet extraction yields 34 g oil/100 g sample for 6 h of extraction time. The GCTOFMS shows that the supercritical extracts exhibited significantly higher aromatic ether group comparable to those obtained by soxhlet.