Application Of Different Methods For The Preparation Of Chlorophyll Pigments For Food And Pharmaceutical Industries

Abstract

The main objective of this work is to establish an economic and applied technique for the production of chlorophyll pigments and their derivatives namely Cu-chlorophyll complex in the form of colour additives. These trials include, the introduction of some modifications concerned with the processing of plant materials, type of extracting solvent, procedures of chemical reactions and purification followed by the application of two of the classical methods previously reported by Schertz 1964 and Iryiama 1974 for comparison. The achieved modified method with oven dried powder or fresh plant material of Spinach for the preparation of Cu-chlorophyll complex has been adopted. Spectrophotometric evaluation of Na-Cu chlorophyllin viz. colour strength and purity and other factors controlled the experimental conditions (bulk of solvent used, time consumed etc.) were carried out. The comparative study of the applied methods revealed that the achieved modified method gave satisfactory results. Preparation of the chlorophyll pigments on experimental scale and semi-pilot scale were carried out by applying the achieved modified method.