Abstract:
Antioxidant activities of crude powders was recovered from palm oil mill effluent (POME) by two methods, electrocoagulation (EC) and sedimentation followed by 70°C oven dry prior to purification process. The crude powder was dissolved in dimethylsalfoxide (DMSO), methanol, chloroform and n-hexane before the antioxidant assays. The extract solution containing 2 mg/ml crude powder in methanol yielded the highest % DPPH inhibition at 90.11% and IC50 was 0.98 mg/ml. In this solution, reducing power, total phenolic content, and total flavonoid content were 9.42 mg GAE/g dry extract, 45.75 mg GAE/g dry extract, and 50 mg QE/g dry extract, respectively. The crude powder was extracted in methanol, separated and purified by column chromatography and thin layer chromatography (TLC) techniques. The purified antioxidant was identified by fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), proton and carbon-13 nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (1H-NMR and 13C-NMR). The result indicated that the purified antioxidant contains β-carotene and esters of the omega-3 linked with the ethylene glycol. The chemical molecular formular is C40H66O4.