Recent advances in the extraction of bioactive compounds with subcritical water: A review
Graphical abstract
Introduction
Natural active ingredients play an important role in life activities. More and more studies focus on these active ingredients (Chan, Ngoh, & Yusoff, 2012; Chien & Norman, 2009; Kai, Michela, Antonio, & Annamaria, 2015; Levac, Rivard, & Missiuna, 2012; Rojas-Graü, Soliva-Fortuny, & Martín-Belloso, 2009; Wen, Zhang, Zhang, et al., 2019; Zhang, Wen, Zhang, et al., 2019; Zhang, Zhu, & Jiang, 2014). Different active ingredients have different biological effects and were widely used in the manufacture of functional foods and the treatment of human diseases (Kroyer, 2004; Liu, 2017; Zhang, Zhang, Wen, et al., 2019). The discovery and extraction of biological ingredients have important practical significance for the development of human society. Therefore, obtaining bioactive substances with suitable extraction methods from natural products is a frontier topic in food and pharmaceutical industries (Joana Gil-Chávez et al., 2013).
At present, a wide variety of biologically active ingredients are separated from all sorts of natural products, such as animals (Seinen et al., 1977), plants (Rios & Recio, 2005), fungi (Zjawiony, 2004), and microorganisms (Georgiou, Lin, & Sharma, 1992), among others. In order to better characterize and quantify the active compounds, it is very important to choose an effective and appropriate extraction method. There are many factors which can influence the extraction process, including the matrix properties, solvent, temperature, pressure, time applied, and ratio of solvent to matrix (Hernández, Lobo, & González, 2009). In recent years, the active compounds have been extracted by using various extraction methods, including Soxhlet extraction, impregnation method, and hot water extraction (Kimbaris et al., 2006; Trochimczuk, Kabay, Arda, & Streat, 2004; Zhao et al., 2010). However, these methods have a number of obvious disadvantages. For example, Soxhlet extraction may cause a large amount of waste of organic reagent, and the extraction efficiency is low. These shortcomings limit the application of this method in industrial amplification (Armenta, Esteve-Turrillas, Garrigues, & de la Guardia, 2017). The disadvantages of the impregnation method are that the extraction time is long, and the extraction efficiency is low. Besides, the extracts with this method is prone to mold, and it is necessary to add a preservative. In addition, the volume of the extracts is large, and then a concentration step is required. For hot water extraction, low extraction rate is still one of the defects. Apart from this, the temperature of hot water extraction is high, and there is also a risk of denaturation of heat sensitive compounds (Chi et al., 2018). Based on above situation, a variety of mature innovative extraction techniques have been developed for the extraction of highly active compounds from natural products, including subcritical water extraction (SWE) (Zhang, Chen, et al., 2019; Zhang, Wen, Duan, et al., 2019; Zhang, Wen, Gu, et al., 2019; Zhang, Wen, Li, et al., 2019; Zhang, Wen, Qin, et al., 2018; Zhang, Wen, Zhang, et al., 2018), supercritical fluid extraction (SFU) (Clifford & Williams, 2000; McHugh & Krukonis, 2013; Reverchon & De Marco, 2006), ultrasound-assisted extraction (UAE) (Wen, Zhang, Yao, et al., 2018; Wen, Zhang, Zhang, et al., 2018; Wen, Zhang, Zhou, et al., 2019; Wen, Zhang, Zhou, et al., 2018), microwave-assisted extraction (MAE) (Kaufmann & Christen, 2002; Lopez-Avila, Young, & Beckert, 1994; Mandal, Mohan, & Hemalatha, 2007), ultrahigh pressure-assisted extraction (UPE) (Prasad et al., 2009; Prasad et al., 2010), pulsed electric field extraction (PEF) (Corrales, Toepfl, Butz, Knorr, & Tauscher, 2008; Fincan, DeVito, & Dejmek, 2004), among others. Especially, SWE has captured more and more attention due to its safety, efficiency, and environment protection. Large amounts of bioactive ingredients such as polysaccharides, proteins, antioxidants, and polyphenols (Herrero, Cifuentes, & Ibañez, 2006; Zakaria & Kamal, 2016) were extracted by using subcritical water. In addition, subcritical water has a modification effect on the molecular structure, which is beneficial with improving its biological activities of active ingredients (Getachew & Chun, 2017). As an environmentally-friendly and efficient extraction technology, SWE technology has shown potential value for application in multiple extraction fields.
Based on these, this review concluded the recent progress in the application of SWE to the extraction of various bioactive constituents in the food and pharmaceutical industrials. The first section highlighted the properties of subcritical water, including its principles, mechanism, influencing factors, and devices. The second section discussed the extraction of various biologically active constituents by using subcritical water. It is expected that all these results could contribute to the application of SWE in the related industries.
Section snippets
Changes in properties of water
In general, water has three states including solid, liquid, and gas. Water is a highly polar solvent at room temperature and atmospheric pressure, and has a high dielectric constant (ε) because of its extensive hydrogen bonding structure (Teo, Tan, Yong, Hew, & Ong, 2010). Therefore, researchers didn't regard water as an effective extraction solvent for extracting non-polar or organic compounds. The nature of water is very different from other solvents, as it is the lightest in the gas state,
Polysaccharides
Polysaccharides have a variety of biological activities, including immunological activity (Chen & Huang, 2018; Luo, Dong, et al., 2018), anti-tumor activity (Liu, Zhang, & Meng, 2018; Mao et al., 2019), and antioxidant activity (Ballesteros, Teixeira, & Mussatto, 2017; Wang, et al., 2016), among others. It is worth noting that many studies have focused on extracting polysaccharides by using subcritical water in recent years (Table 2). For example, our previous work has extracted polysaccharides
Conclusion and future trends
In conclusion, the bioactive compounds from natural products with SWE are preferred for use in the food and pharmaceutical industries, and its biological activity and stability can be maintained during the extraction process. The use of SWE to extract compounds from natural products provides an even better method, especially in environmental protection. In addition, subcritical water can greatly improve heat and mass transfer efficiency during extraction, which can increase extraction yield,
Acknowledgement
This work was funded by National Key R & D Program, China (2016YFD0400303); Postgraduate Research & Practice Innovation Program of Jiangsu Province, China (KYCX17_1799).
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Jixian Zhang and Chaoting Wen contributed equally to this work and should be regarded as co-first authors.