Microwave-Assisted Extraction of Trimyristin from Nutmeg using Ethanol: A Greener Approach for the Undergraduate Organic Chemistry Laboratory

Taqarrub Hossain¹, Danielle Spencer¹ and Richard W. Denton^1,

¹Department of Chemistry and Environmental Science, Medgar Evers College- CUNY, Brooklyn, NY, USA

Cite this paper

Taqarrub Hossain, Danielle Spencer and Richard W. Denton. Microwave-Assisted Extraction of Trimyristin from Nutmeg using Ethanol: A Greener Approach for the Undergraduate Organic Chemistry Laboratory. World Journal of Chemical Education. 2023; 11(2):17-20. doi: 10.12691/WJCE-11-2-3

Abstract

The extraction of trimyristin from nutmeg, a species of the genus Myristica fragrans, is a typical experiment executed in the organic chemistry teaching laboratory. In this vein, trimyristin was extracted from nutmeg using the microwave-assisted extraction (MEA) method with 95% ethanol and diethyl ether. This MEA procedure promised to be more practical than pre-existing protocols utilized in the undergraduate teaching laboratory. This study established ethanol, a greener solvent than diethyl ether, as more efficient with up to 20% isolated crude yield for extracting this triglyceride from nutmeg using MEA. The recrystallized trimyristin was characterized by melting point, IR, ¹H-, and ¹³C-NMR spectroscopy.

Keywords

microwave-assisted extraction, trimyristin, ethanol, undergraduate organic chemistry laboratory

Copyright

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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