With a growing focus on green chemistry, the extraction of natural products with natural deep eutectic solvents (NADES), which are eutectic mixtures of hydrogen bond donors and acceptors, has become an ever-expanding field of research. However, the use of NADES for the extraction of spilanthol from Acmella oleracea (L.) R.K.Jansen has not yet been investigated. Therefore, in this study, 20 choline chloride-based NADES, and for comparison, ethanol, were used as green extraction agents for spilanthol from Acmella oleracea flower heads. The effects of time, water addition, and temperature on NADES extractions were investigated and analysed by HPLC-DAD quantification. Additionally, UHPLC-DAD-ESI-MSn results for dichloromethane extracts, as well as the isolation of spilanthol and other main constituents as reference compounds, are reported. The best green extraction results were achieved by choline chloride (ChCl) with 1,2-propanediol (P, 1:2 molar ratio, +20% water) at 244.58 µg/mL, comparable to yields with ethanol (245.93 µg/mL). Methylurea (MeU, 1:2, +20% water) also showed promising results as a hydrogen bond donor in combination with choline chloride (208.12 µg/mL). In further experiments with NADES ChCl/P (1:2) and ChCl/MeU (1:2), extraction time had the least effect on spilanthol extraction with NADES, while yield decreased with water addition over 20% and increased with extraction temperature up to 80 °C. NADES are promising extraction agents for the extraction of spilanthol, and these findings could lead to applicable extracts for medicinal purposes, due to their non-toxic constituents.
Keywords: Acmella oleracea; HPLC-DAD; NADES; NMR; UHPLC-MS; green extraction; isolation; spilanthol.