Water Extraction of Anthocyanins from Black Rice and Purification Using Membrane Separation and Resin Adsorption

A simple and efficient method to extract and purify anthocyanins from black rice was developed in this work. After pretreatment of black rice, anthocyanins were extracted by buffer solutions, and were purified using membrane separation and resin adsorption. The single-factor experiments and orthogonal design were applied. The results showed that extraction ratio could be 0.99 ± 0.01% under the optimal condition of liquid–solid ratio 12:1, temperature 50C, time 80 min and pH 3.2. The 3 kDa molecular weight cut-off (MWCO) was used to remove proteins and polysaccharides, and the DM301 resin was found to have both good adsorptivity and desorptivity for anthocyanins. After the elution using 85% (vol/vol) ethanol solution, the purified anthocyanins were obtained by retention with the membrane of 200 Da MWCO. The recovery and purity of the anthocyanins finally obtained was 0.86% and 95.93%, respectively. The results are beneficial to the large-scale extraction of anthocyanins from black rice. Practical Applications Due to the growing demand for natural pigments, the natural anthocyanins have drawn great attentions. However, the immaturity of the large-scale purification procedures has limited the application of anthocyanins in functional food and pharmaceutical industries. Since the black rice is the rich source of anthocyanins, the large-scale water extraction and macroporous absorbent resins purification parameters were systematically investigated in the current study. About 0.86 g anthocyanins could be obtained from per 100 g black rice based on the large-scale method, which has a good recovery, and the purity could reach 95.93%. Meanwhile, the whole procedure was green and non-pollution as the primary solvents were water and ethanol. Furthermore, the results also would be conducive to the processing and utilization of black rice.