Isolation of valuable components from Acalypha indica using solvent extraction

Acalypha indica is a weed that grows in South-East Asia. It contains several valuable compounds that can be used for curing various diseases such as rheumatism, skin infection, and blood dysentery. These compounds of the plants are usually collected by extraction. In this work, the extraction of Acalypha indica using solid-liquid extraction was studied. The influence of parameters as types of solvents (ethanol, distilled water, hexane, and ethyl acetate), and solvent to solid ratio (416:1, 125:1, 50:1, 20:1) were observed. The results showed that ethanol provided the highest extraction efficiency and the expected yield increased when solvent to solid ratio increased. Then, the kinetic model of solid-liquid extraction based on the assumptions of the Peleg‘s law and the second-order law was compared. In this study, the second-order rate law model provided higher correlation coefficient than the Peleg’s model in all experiments.