Veeraphong Bhornsmithikun, Pakamas Chetpattananondh, Ram Yamsaengsung, and Kulchanat Prasertsit

pp. 635 - 644

Abstract

Prebiotics are functional foods with health-promoting properties that are currently used in many developed countries,
such as the United States, Japan, and the EU. The synthesis method is still the main commercial production method. There are
only a few direct extractions of natural oligosaccharides from plants in Thailand due to the lack of extraction devices. This
research aims to design and construct the continuous extractor and study the optimum conditions of prebiotics extraction from
jackfruit seed. Jackfruit seeds were extracted with 50% ethanol as a solvent. The response surface methodology was applied for
experimental design to study the effects of temperatures (40-60°C), extraction times (15-45 min), and L/S ratios (6:1-10:1 v/w)
in laboratory scale continuous extraction. The extraction efficiency was based on the extraction yield and the amount of nonreducing sugar, which is expected to be prebiotics. The optimum condition was the extraction time of 15 min at 60°C and L/S
ratio 10:1 (v/w), which gave the maximum non-reducing sugar content of 491.70 mg/g extract from RSM modeling. This optimum
condition was applied for pilot scale continuous extraction. The pilot scale continuous extraction unit composes of three 70-L
stainless steel extraction tanks equipped with an indirect steam chest for process heating. The heating tank is an 88-L stainless
steel vessel. Each extraction pot is connected to a solution pot. After extraction the solution was pumped to a large evaporation tank (60 L) and a small evaporation tank (7 L), respectively. With three-stage extraction the average extraction yield was
20.25% and the average non-reducing sugar content was 400 mg/g extract.