Analysis of operating variables for yerba mate leaves supercritical carbon dioxide extraction

Abstract

© 2018, CI and CEQ. All rights reserved. Yerba mate is a natural source of purine alkaloids and other bioactive compounds with prominent therapeutic activity. In this work, the influence of operating variables on yield and purine alkaloids contents upon supercritical carbon dioxide extraction was examined. High-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) was applied to determine the contents of caffeine and theobromine. The evaluation of the experimental results was performed by applying hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) and principal component analysis (PCA), followed by analysis of variance (ANOVA). HPLC analysis of yerba mate showed that the total yield and the contents of theobromine and caffeine rapidly increased with time and pressure of the extraction.