Team:BHSF/Implementation

Implementation

The reason for doing this project is that after knowing a paper and discussing it, the students in the same group are more interested in a real-life problem - the shortage of carmine acid.

In our real life, carminic acid is used as a dye everywhere, especially in food and cosmetics. Strawberry milk, red velvet cake, soda, cocktail; Lipstick, blush, eye shadow, and so on cannot do without daily life necessities. Special attention, the daily necessities we listed are still in direct contact with the human body. The traditional production method is to grind the dried body of the cochineal vermilion, soak it in hot water at 60-70 ℃ and stir it from time to time. After about one day, most of the pigment can be extracted, and then after the second extraction, the extraction rate can reach almost 100%. The two filtrates were combined and concentrated under reduced pressure to obtain pigment. This method of extracting carminic acid faces three major problems: low efficiency, causing allergy, and unacceptability by animal activists. If our experiment is successful, this technology will play a better role in improving not only the food industry but also the production of cosmetics in the future.