Optimization of aqueous extraction of blue dye from butterfly pea flower

Abstract

Dyes are widely used in industries such as textiles, leather, paper, and plastics to colour the final products. People use natural sources such as stem, bark, leaves, roots and flowers to get different colours for dyeing purposes. In addition, natural colorants such as anthocyanins are known for their possible health benefits as dietary antioxidants. The objectives of this study are to extract the blue dye from the butterfly pea flower using maceration method and to determine the optimum condition by response surface methodology. The flowers were dried, grinded and went through the maceration method for the extraction process. Response surface models were developed correlating the extraction yield with three parameters namely residence time, temperature and solid to liquid ratio. The result from this experiment was optimized using response surface methodology to obtain the optimum condition at temperature 54°C, extraction time 74 minutes and solid-to-liquid ratio of 1:37 to give extraction yield of 45.51 %.