Central Composite Design for Solvent Extraction of Oil from Neem (Azadirachta indica) seed

Optimization of neem oil extraction using Central Composite Design (CCD) was evaluated in this research. The effects of two factors: sample weight and extraction duration on the response which is neem oil volume extracted, were investigated. The CCD employed resulted in 13 experimental runs. Extraction was carried out in a 250 ml Soxhlet extractor. Hexane was used as solvent with thermostated heating mantle at temperature 60°C. Results obtained shows the optimized values of 54.69% of neem oil was obtained with 25 g weight of sample with extraction time of 12hours. The r 2 and r 2 adj values were close to 1 which indicates that the regression model was a good one.