In MAE the period of heating is another important factor to be considered. Extraction times in MAE are very short compared to conventional techniques and usually vary from a few minutes to a half-hour, avoiding possible thermal degradation and oxidation [ 20, 28 ] , which is especially important for target compounds sensitive to overheating of the solute–solvent system. Overheating occurs because of the high dielectric properties of the solvent, especially ethanol and methanol, and further dilution with water that increases the heat capacity of the solvent combination [ 7 ] . Higher extraction time usually tends to increase the extraction yield. However, this increase was found to be very small with longer time [ 41 ] . Irradiation time is also