Chinese scientists conquer the key technology of artemisinin green scale production

Artemisinin and other natural extraction drugs have been difficult to produce in a large scale and continuous way as chemical drugs because of their special sources The reporter learned from the Institute of process engineering of the Chinese Academy of Sciences that the green scale production process of artemisinin developed by the Institute has been successfully applied to solve the key technical problems restricting the development of related industries Artemisinin is a natural ingredient for effective treatment of malaria After Tu Youyou, a Chinese scientist, successfully extracted it from plants, the development of related drugs was carried out successively In 2005, artemisinin based combination therapy (ACT) was recommended by the World Health Organization as the best way to treat malaria Wang Hui, a researcher at the Institute of process engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that at present, artemisinin is mainly produced by repeatedly extracting Artemisia annua with organic solvent and then purification and separation Among them, the extraction process has the problems of low selectivity and serious solvent loss In the purification process, the processing time is too long and the energy consumption is high, which results in limited processing capacity and limits the production capacity According to Wang Hui, now scientists have replaced traditional extraction and chromatography with new methods such as extraction process strengthening and low-temperature crystallization purification, so as to realize large-scale and refined treatment They also introduced a kind of thin-film evaporator like capillaries to replace the traditional large-diameter evaporation kettle, effectively improving the solvent recovery rate, reducing energy consumption, so as to be more green and environmental friendly Zhang suojiang, director of the Institute of process engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that most of the artemisinin production processes are intermittent This technology solves the key technology and system integration problems that restrict the large-scale and continuous production of artemisinin It not only opens a new path for the green upgrading of artemisinin production process, but also provides a useful reference for the extraction and separation process of other natural products At present, the process has been successfully applied Jiang Hongge, general manager of Henan Yuzhou Tianyuan Biotechnology Co., Ltd., as the first application enterprise, said that the production and operation results show that the whole process runs stably, the solvent recovery rate can reach 99.9%, the energy consumption is reduced by 43% compared with the traditional process, and the annual output can reach 60 tons