Ekstraksi Minyak Serai Wangi dengan Bantuan Microwave

Abstract

Lemongrass is a plant that produces essential oils. Essential oils have now been widely used to produce commercial products. So far, the process used to produce lemongrass essential oil uses a conventional extraction process which has disadvantages such as long extraction time, excessive use of solvents and inefficient energy. In this study, later researchers will examine the extraction method using microwaves with the help of microwaves on the extraction of citronella oil to determine the best solvent and optimum conditions. Lemongrass oil was extracted using a variety of solvents including ethanol, n-hexane, acetone, ethanol: water (1:1), and n-hexane: acetone (1:1) to see which solvent was the best, the solvent determination extraction process was carried out in the same operating conditions, at 300 watts of microwave power for 15 minutes and using 50 mesh lemongrass. This process showed that the use of n-hexane as a solvent resulted in the highest yield value of 1.25%, density 0.9017, refractive index 1.4716 and the percentage of geranial 60.30% and citranelal and 12.65%. Optimum conditions were obtained at 300 watts of microwave power for 20 minutes and using 100 mesh sized lemongrass. At the optimum condition, the yield was 2.66%, density 0.8924, refractive index 1.4727 with the percentage of geranial 52.64% and citranelal 13.75%.