Highly simplified preparation of tea flavonoids from surplus tea leaves by the novel three-phase extraction and purification

ABSTRACT

A novel three-phase extraction and purification procedure was developed to prepare high-quality flavonoids from surplus tea leaves. Flavonoids were selectively extracted in ethyl acetate (EtOAc) by the EtOAc-water-leaf three-phase extraction, with 91.2% extraction efficiency, more than 50% higher than the traditional water extraction. The EtOAc extracts were purified by the EtOAc-water- montmorillonite/charcoal three-phase adsorptive purification at 98% recovery. Highly purified flavonoids were obtained with less than 1.0% caffeine. The overall flavonoid recovery reached 90.3%, more than 40% higher than traditional methods. This procedure highly simplified the processes and significantly increased the recovery of flavonoid production from tea leaves.

KEYWORDS:

• Tea flavonoids
• surplus tea leaves
• decaffeination
• three-phase extraction
• three-phase adsorptive purification

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Guangdong Provincial Science and Technology Programs (2014A010107026), China Central Government Agricultural Technology Promotion (2015-60-43), and Innovation Project of Graduate School of South China Normal University[2017];