Soapberry has been used as a detergent since a long time ago, and saponins in soapberry act as a natural surfactant. However, the extract is usually yellow-brown or dark-brown. This limited its application in some cleaning products. Hydrogen peroxide was used as a decolorization agent to improve the color of the extract. In this study, the seedless soapberry was dried and crushed. The mixture of ethanol and water (1:1) was then added. The ratio of raw material to solvent was 1:10 (g/mL). The mixture was stirred at room temperature for 6 hours. The orthogonal matrix L9 (34) consisted of nine experiments to optimize the influence of factors such as hydrogen peroxide concentration, temperature, time, and pH. The results showed a decolorization rate of 91.73% and total saponin loss of 6.47% at a hydrogen peroxide concentration of 6%, a temperature of 80 oC, a time of 80 mins, and pH of 8.
Author: MEng. Pham Hoang Danh
MEng. Nguyen Dinh Phuc
BEng. Nguyen Tu Thuc Hue
