Solvents Design on the Basis of Molecular-Microscopic Properties of Binary Mixtures for Lycopene Extraction

Lycopene is a natural compound with high-value of nutritional and medical properties. Nowadays, the extraction of Lycopene with mixtures of solvents to obtain more efficiency and less toxicity is interested. In this study, the Lycopene extraction in three binary mixtures of solvents (Ethyl-acetate/Ethanol, Hexane/Isopropanol and Benzene/Isopropanol) was measured and then the effects of solvatochromic parameters (π*, dipolarity/polarizability; β, hydrogen-bond acceptor basicity; α, hydrogen-bond donor acidity) and solvophobicity (Sp) parameters on the extraction from tomato tissues have been considered. Among the all parameters, Sp shows the biggest contribution in the extraction that is well justified, knowing that Lycopenes are lypophobic. Our calculation results show that in addition to Sp, another parameter is needed to get the reasonable correlation between the parameters and the extraction. For Ethanol/Ethyle-acetate mixture, β, for Isopropanol/Benzene mixture, π* and for Isopropanol/Hexane mixture, α, participated in the correlation equation in addition to Sp.