LAUSR

Mariposa Christia Vespertilionis (L.) (MCV) Bakh. f. is a plant, commonly known as Mariposa or ‘butterfly wing’ due to the shape and color of its leaves which is similar to a butterfly. MCV has been known to be used as a treatment for many diseases such as tuberculosis, bronchitis, inflamed tonsils, colds, muscle weakness and poor blood circulation. Supercritical Fluid Extraction (SFE) is the latest equipment that can be used for the extraction of MCV leaves. SFE is the process of separating one component from another by using supercritical fluids as the extraction media. SFE is widely used in extraction due to its environmental friendly process compared to conventional extraction technique. The aim of this study was to obtain the most optimum conditions in terms of temperature, pressure and particle size in achieving the highest amount of yield in the MCV plant extract. Thus the manipulated parameters for this study were Temperature (T), Pressure (P) and Particle Size (S) where the ranges used were: temperature, T (°C): 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, pressure, P (bar): 150, 200, 250, 300, 350, and particle Size, S: 63 µm, 125 µm, 250 µm, 500 µm and 1 mm. To obtain the optimum condition of yield, Response Surface Methodology (RSM) was used. For the RSM design of experiment, 20 samples were run throughout this experiment. The optimum parameter values generated from the RSM were 39°C for temperature, 202 bars for the pressure and 500 μm for the particle size with the yield of 7.9 %. Actual validation runs were carried out and the percentage error was 14 %.