Abstract
Tea saponins have high surface-active and biological activities and are widely used in chemicals, food, pharmaceuticals, and pesticides. Tea saponins are usually extracted using ethanol or water, but both methods have their disadvantages, including a negative impact on the environment, high energy consumption, and low purity. In this study, we explored an effective process for extracting tea saponins from tea meal using deep eutectic solvents combined with ultrasonic extraction and enzymatic techniques. The experimental results showed that a high extraction efficiency of 20.93 ± 0.48% could be achieved in 20 min using an ultrasonic power of 40% and a binary DES consisting of betaine and ethylene glycol (with a molar ratio of 1:3) at a material-liquid ratio of 1:35 and that the purity of the tea saponins after purification by a large-pore adsorption resin reached 95.94%, which was higher than that of commercially available standard tea saponin samples. In addition, the extracted tea saponins were evaluated for their antioxidant and bacteriostatic activities using chemical and biological methods; the results showed that the tea saponins extracted using these methods possessed antioxidant properties and displayed significant antibacterial activity. Therefore, the present study developed a method for using deep eutectic solvents as an environmentally friendly technological solution for obtaining high-purity tea saponins from tea meal oil. This is expected to replace the current organic solvent and water extraction process and has great potential for industrial development and a number of possible applications.