Simultaneous extraction and separation of flavonols and flavones from Chamaecyparis obtusa by multi-phase extraction...

Flavonols and flavones, especially quercitrin, myricetin and amentoflavone, are the main anti-bacterial and anti-cancer compounds in Chamaecyparis obtuse. Multi-phase extraction is a new method that can extract and separate target compounds simultaneously.

An amino ionic liquid immobilised microsphere polymer was used as a multi-phase extraction sorbent to extract and separate quercitrin, myricetin and amentoflavone from Chamaecyparis obtusa.

The sorbent and Chamaecyparis obtusa powder were packed into a single cartridge. Using a fixed volume of methanol with five repetitions, the target compounds were extracted from the powder to the sorbent. The sorbent was then washed with n-hexane to remove any interfering species and the target compounds were eluted sequentially using water, methanol and methanol containing 1% acetic acid (vol.).

Under the optimised conditions, 0.45 mg/g of quercitrin, 0.18 mg/g of myricetin and 0.12 mg/g of amentoflavone from 2.0 g of powder were obtained by multi-phase extraction using 0.3 g of sorbent.

The method described has a low deviation error, requires a small amount of solvent and is highly selective and reproducible.