Advantages And Disadvantages Of Phytochemicals

865 Words4 Pages

Natural product is any product derived from resources available in nature with little or no modification. Natural products, known as phytochemicals, are a group of nutritive compounds found in herbs, fruits, vegetables and spices. Plants synthesize thousands of these metabolites for their growth and development, reproduction, defense against attack by many different kinds of organisms, and survival in often harsh and ever changing environments. These metabolites, broadly classified as: lipids (fixed oils, fats, and waxes); phenols; tannins; proteins; alkaloids; carbohydrates; glycosides; essential oils and resins and resin combinations are very useful in pharmaceutical industry, cosmetic products, food industry etc. All compounds of biological system can be divided into two broad arenas. One is primary metabolites, which are the chemical …show more content…

In addition to its favorable physical properties, carbon dioxide is inexpensive, safe and abundant. The extraction procedure possesses distinct advantages: i) The extraction of constituents at low temperature, which strictly avoids damage from heat and some organic solvents. ii) No solvent residues. iii) Environmentally friendly extraction procedure. The largest area of growth in the development of SFE has been the rapid expansion of its applications. SFE finds extensive application in the extraction of pesticides, environmental samples, foods and fragrances, essential oils, polymers and natural products. The major deterrent in the commercial application of the extraction process is its prohibitive capital investment. The conventional techniques like hydrodistillation, solvent extraction, temperature extraction are less efficient, time consuming and product is less pure. Where as novel techniques such as ultrasound extraction, supercritical extraction, microwave assisted extraction are yet to be proven economical and their commercial use is yet

Open Document