Chemical Profiling of Acalypha Indica Obtained from Supercritical Carbon Dioxide Extraction and Soxhlet Extraction Methods

Acalypha indica is a weed that grows in South-East Asia. It contains several valuable compounds that can be used for curing various diseases such as rheumatism, skin infection and blood dysentery. Here, the extraction of A. indica using Soxhlet extraction with two different solvents and supercritical CO2 extraction (SCE) with two different temperatures (40 and 60°C) was performed. In Soxhlet extraction, ethanol solvent provided the highest extraction yield of 34.36%. For SCE, the increased temperature has positive effect and the yield of the SCE process (the highest extraction yield was 0.89%) was lower than that of the Soxhlet extraction using hexane (8.3%). Then, the extracted compound profilings were analysed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometer (GC–MS). The extraction selectivity of active compounds obtained from each extraction methods was observed. These results suggested the trade-off between yield and selectivity of extraction to obtain bioactive compounds from A. indica.