Synchronous extraction and separation of corn silk bioactive substance and the prediction of partition efficiency

Flavonoids and polysaccharides are useful components of corn silk. For synchronously extracting and separating the flavonoids and polysaccharides from corn silk, the method of ultrasonic cell disruption extraction was combined with an aqueous two-phase system (ATPS). The separation of flavonoids and solvents, and the recycling of solvents can be achieved by utilizing smart polymers for phase-forming in ATPS. This method presents better extraction efficiency and recycling ability compared to others. The average extraction efficiency for flavonoid and corn silk polysaccharides can reach 16.73 mg·g-1 and 75.82 mg·g-1. The recycling experiment demonstrates the feasibility of using the smart polymer for recycling. The prediction of partition efficiency of the corn silk bioactive substance was implemented by an artificial neural network (ANN) and response surface methodology (RSM). The ANN model outperformed the RSM one in both prediction accuracy and generalization ability.