The extraction of passion fruit oil with green solvents

In the present paper, the extraction of passion fruit oil with acetone, ethanol and isopropanol of passion fruit seeds under three different techniques (ultrasound, shaker and soxhlet) were studied. The influence of seed to solvent ratio, time and type of solvent were investigated during ultrasound, shaker and soxhlet process. Hexane was used as well, as an extraction solvent to evaluate the extraction of oil in all extraction process studied to make a comparison among the employed solvents. The temperature was kept isoterminally at 40 degrees C in both shaker and ultrasound process. The highest yield when green solvents were was 23.8%, during ultrasound process, with acetone was used. Our results indicate that ultrasound can greatly replace the conventional extraction. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.