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Updated: Jul 7, 2025

Employing Pressurized Hot Water Extraction PHWE to Explore Natural Products Chemistry in the Undergraduate Laboratory
Published on: November 7, 2018
An eco-friendly extraction method to obtain pectin from passion fruit rinds (Passiflora edulis sp.) using subcritical
Débora Tamires Vitor Pereira1, Pablo Méndez-Albiñana2, Jose A Mendiola3
1State University of Campinas (Unicamp), School of Food Engineering, Department of Engineering and Food Technology, Laboratory of High Pressure in Food Engineering, Campinas, SP 13083 - 862, Brazil; Foodomics Laboratory, Instituto de Investigación en Ciencias de la Alimentación (CIAL, CSIC-UAM), Nicolás Cabrera 9, Campus de Cantoblanco, 28049 Madrid, Spain.
Abstract:
This work evaluated the efficiency of Subcritical Water Extraction (SWE) and Pressurized Natural Deep Eutectic Solvents (P-NaDESs) under different temperatures (100, 120, 140 and 160 °C) in obtaining pectin from Passion Fruit Rinds (PFR) and its residual biomass (PFR - UAPLE), and compare the results with those of Conventional Extraction (CE). The highest pectin yields, 19.1 and 27.6 %, were achieved using P-NaDES (Citric Acid:Glucose:Water) at 120 °C for PFR and its PFR-UAPLE, respectively. Regarding the Degree of Esterification (DE), pectin obtained with SWE and CE had DE below 50 %, while with P-NaDES (Citric Acid: Glucose:Water), DE was above 50 %. Higher Molecular Weights (MW) (98 and 81 kDa) were obtained with SWE and P-NaDES from PFR compared to PFR-UAPLE and CE. Galacturonic acid was the most abundant (74 to 78 %) monosaccharide obtained by SWE. In terms of morphology, water extraction provided pectin with more uniform textures, whereas extraction with acidified mixtures led to more heterogeneous surfaces. Overall, comparing SWE and P-NaDES, the obtained pectins differed in terms of monomeric composition, MW and DE. These results indicate that pectins obtained by both methods can have different applications depending on their structural characteristics.

