Using basic solution to remove curcumin stain

A Curcuminoid is a bioactive compound which contains 77% of Curcumin, 18% of demethoxycurcumin, and 5% of bisdemethoxycurcumin which contain phenols as functional groups. Many people consume curcumin through curry which is a very well-known Indian food, but once stained in a plate or bowl, curcumin is very hard to remove. This experiment used sodium hydroxide solution to give an alternative method to remove curcumin effectively. Since curcumin contains phenol which contains hydroxyl group, sodium hydroxide would convert phenol group into phenolate which becomes an ionic group. Therefore, curcumin became very easy to dissolve in water, thus easy to remove curcumin stains. The results showed that rinsing the curcumin stained tile with pH 14 solution removed the curcumin effectively. This was confirmed through the colorimeter CIELAB yielding 90.96,1.87, 6.70, which closely matched with our reference. Our results showed that removing curcumin stains by converting phenol to phenolate using a basic solution worked well and can be used to clean the stain easily and effectively.