TAGUCHI OPTIMIZATION FOR EFFICIENT EXTRACTION OF A NATURAL DYE FROM BOUGAINVILLEA GLABRA BRACTS

Pravinkumar.D. Patil, C.R. Rao, A.I. Wasif, J.R.Nagla

Abstract: Dyes are used for various purposes such as coloration of textiles, foodstuffs, leather tanning. These are also used for cosmetic, pharmaceutical and photovoltaic applications. The synthetic dyes are today’s established materials for all these applications. However due to environmental and human health related issues, a major group of the synthetic dyes is proven to be dangerous. Eventually, at this stage of civilization, natural dyes are one of the alternatives to these synthetic dyes. Besides this, in the past few decades, recent trend is seen to use products from natural resources in all the possible fields. Dyes obtained from natural sources are among such important products. One major challenge in upbringing these natural but old dyes is the drawback of incomplete dye extraction from their source. This research mainly focuses on extraction optimization of a natural dye from bracts of a shrub ‘Bougainvillea Glabra’. Taguchi technique was used for the optimization process. The results showed that 150 micron particle size, 1:20 solid-solvent ratio, one hour extraction and enzyme addition as assistance were the optimum conditions for extraction. The optimum and control extractions results were compared. The respective absorbance values were 0.255 and 0.280. It was encouraging to observe 9.88% of increase in the dye yield. Yield improvement in the optimized extraction indicated enhancement in the extraction efficiency. Besides efficient extraction, the research featured the successful implementation of two important green chemistry principles namely ‘improving atom economy’ and ‘use of natural renewable material resources’.

Keywords: Taguchi optimization, natural dye, extraction efficiency

DOI: https://doi.org/10.15623/ijret.2014.0304004