Page 73 - วารสารกรมการแพทย์แผนไทยฯ ปีที่ 5 ฉบับที่ 3

Journal of Thai Traditional & Alternative Medicine Vol. 5 No. 3 September - December 2007 Ú¯Ò

fascia removed and kept for the next process. occurred during the extracting process was consid-
A series of preliminary studies were conducted ered as a waste product, and thus discarded.
in order to find the animal fat most effective for ex- At the end of the extraction period, the animal
traction in terms of ratio and duration. The protocol fat and the clean dichloromethane layer were trans-
of the study was adapted from the previous studies ferred to a 500 ml beaker, with the dichloromethane
of essential oil extraction using purified animal layer being collected first. Then, a glass stirring
7-10
fats. rod was used to press the dichloromethane portion
remaining in the animal fat and later combined
Experimental with the previous layer. The total volume of dichloro-

1. Preliminary extraction study using dichloro- methane layer was recorded and then it was trans-
methane ferred to the aluminum tray. The dichloromethane
Sliced pig fat, bovine fat and buffalo fat weigh- was removed by evaporating process in the same
ing 100 g each were separated and transferred to 250 manner as in the previous experiment to yield the
ml glass bottles; 100 ml of dichloromethane was added extracted fat. The extracted fat was weighed and
to each bottle, and the bottles were tightly sealed recorded; it was divided by the original fat weight
and kept 7 days for extraction. The experiment was to give the percentage yield (by weight). The per-
conducted in triplicate. The dichloromethane layer of centage yield of waste product was also determined
each fat sample was separately collected and trans- by collecting the yellow layer and evaporated it in a
ferred to aluminum trays and exposed to the sun fume hood. Only the ratio that resulted in the
during the day and evaporated overnight in a fume highest average yield of extracted fat and the lowest
hood. After the dichloromethane was completely yield of waste product was selected for the next study.
evaporated, the solidity, color, and texture of each 3. Determination of the optimum duration for
extract of fat were carefully evaluated. Extracted ani- extracting fat
mal fat with optimum solidity, color and texture was The study period to determine the optimum
selected for the next study. duration for extracting fat ranged from 1 to 30 days.
2. Determination of the optimum extraction ra- The whole study was divided into three parts, each
tio between fat and dichloromethane using different amounts of animal fat (30 g, 100 g and
The animal fat that showed the best character- 200 g respectively). The optimum ratio selected from
istics in the preliminary study was selected for the the previous study was a factor to determine the
study of optimum extraction ratio. The selected ani- volume (ml) of dichloromethane used in this study.
mal fat was extracted with dichloromethane in In the first part, 30 g of selected animal fat was
several ratios ranging from 1:1 (30 g fat: 30 ml sol- extracted with the corresponding volume of dichloro-
vent), 1:2 (30 g fat: 60 ml solvent), 1:3 (30 g fat: 90 ml methane. Samples for each day were conducted in
solvent), 2:1 (60 g fat: 30 ml solvent), 2:3 (60 g fat: 90 triplicate; therefore, a total of 150 samples were re-
ml solvent), 3:2 (90 g fat: 60 ml solvent) and 3:1 (90 g quired during the 30-day study period. All samples
fat: 100 ml solvent). All of the extraction ratios were (30 g for each) were transferred to 250 ml glass bottles,
conducted in triplicate using 250 ml glass bottles. and the dichloromethane was added and left at am-
The bottles containing the animal fats and the corre- bient temperature for 1 day. The dichloromethane
sponding solvent volume were left at ambient tem- layer from each sample was collected the next day
perature for 10 hours. and later transferred to the aluminum tray and pro-
Two important factors used to select the opti- cessed in the same manner as in the previous study.
mum extracting ratio were the percentage yield of The second and third parts of the study were
purified fat and waste product. The stinky yellow layer conducted by using a larger amount of animal fat:
containing the contaminated and dirty portion of fat 100 grams and 200 grams of selected animal fat,