The current situation and development of plant medicine extraction equipment

Business news on August 3 1 Current situation of plant extraction equipment at present, the mainstream equipment of traditional Chinese medicine extraction includes percolation tank, multi-functional extraction tank, dynamic extraction tank and hot reflux extraction and concentration unit The structure and operation method of the equipment are basically the same as the single tank equipment of oil extraction In recent years, supercritical fluid extraction, ultrasonic enhanced extraction, microwave extraction and other process equipment are not mature enough, and the design idea has not jumped out of the single tank extraction mode Here we make a brief review: 1 The typical leaching extraction equipment of the leaching tank The solvent is added from the upper part of the tank, and the medicine in the tank is extracted and discharged from the bottom It has the advantages of good quality, less impurities, high extraction yield, simple equipment and easy manufacturing and maintenance The disadvantages are slow extraction speed, large amount of solvent, low production efficiency and large energy consumption A large number of extraction tanks are needed in large-scale production, which covers a large area and has high investment 2 The multi-functional extraction tank uses the most extraction equipment Use jacketed steam to heat the medicinal materials immersed in the solvent and soak them for extraction In addition to being suitable for warm extraction, it can also use closed condensing system to recover the volatile oil in medicinal materials, and it can improve the extraction yield when adopting two-stage or three-stage cross flow extraction process The disadvantage is that when the diameter of the tank is too large, the solid matter hinders the heat transfer efficiency, the material is difficult to fully boil, so that the extraction efficiency is reduced, and a large number of extraction tanks are needed in large-scale production 3 Dynamic extraction tank (with agitation for enhanced extraction) and multifunctional extraction tank with agitation device The utility model has the advantages that the medicinal powder can be suspended in the solvent under the action of agitation, the heat transfer speed is fast, the diffusion speed is fast, so the extraction speed is fast, and the extraction rate is high The disadvantage is that the power consumption of medicinal materials to be processed into fine powder is very large The separation of the dregs and the extraction liquid needs to pass through the centrifuge or the plate frame filter, which consumes more manpower and power 4 Soxhlet extraction and concentration unit is a unit combining multi-functional extraction tank and concentrator according to the principle of Soxhlet extractor The extraction liquid discharged from the multi-functional extraction tank enters the concentrator after filtration, and the solvent evaporated during concentration returns to the multi-functional extractor after condensation The whole process is a differential multi-stage cross flow extraction As long as the time is sufficient, a high extraction rate can be achieved, and the production efficiency and extraction rate are superior to the previous equipment But the problems of multifunctional extraction tank are also inevitable 5 Other extraction technologies, such as supercritical extraction, ultrasonic enhanced extraction and microwave extraction, are newly developed in recent years The advantages of supercritical carbon dioxide extraction are high selectivity and purity It is suitable to extract lipophilic substances with known chemical structure and small molecular weight from solid materials The disadvantages are high operating pressure, high energy consumption and high manufacturing cost when the equipment is enlarged It is not suitable to extract mixtures with unknown components and substances with low solubility in carbon dioxide Ultrasonic enhanced extraction can use the energy of ultrasonic vibration to enhance the diffusion process, so that the solvent is easy to be immersed in the solid, and the solid solute is easy to diffuse from the solid interior to the solid-liquid interface, thus accelerating the extraction process The disadvantage is limited by ultrasonic power, the economy of large-scale production is not good, and the safety of high-power ultrasonic needs to be verified Microwave extraction uses the effect of microwave on polar molecules to heat the solvent and medicinal materials, so as to break the cell wall and accelerate the extraction Microwave extraction is also limited by the power of microwave generation, and there are some engineering problems in enlarging the production scale The above process equipment are single tank and intermittent extraction equipment, which has the advantages of flexible production arrangement, suitable for small batch and multi variety plant extraction, and less investment in small-scale production The disadvantages are low overall efficiency, high production cost and high investment in large-scale production Some newly developed extraction processes have some technical problems in amplification II Development of new extraction equipment With the development of modernization of traditional Chinese medicine, the variety and quantity of plant extraction will be greatly increased The extraction equipment is required to have the characteristics of large processing capacity, low production cost, less investment and high safety when using organic solvent However, the existing extraction equipment and process are difficult to meet the above requirements The continuous extraction equipment of traditional Chinese medicine designed according to the principle of continuous extraction of vegetable oil can meet the requirements Technology and safety requirements of large-scale industrial production 1 The horizontal continuous extractor is mainly composed of rotating body (rotor), false bottom (movable screen), track, extraction liquid collecting grid, spray device, transmission device, etc the whole equipment is sealed by the shell The rotating body of the extractor is a circular body composed of two concentric cones The annular body is separated by steel plates to form several grids called material grids The lower part of the material grids is equipped with a false bottom, which can support materials and pass through the mixed extract The outer ring of the rotating body is equipped with a rack, which is driven by a chain wheel and a reducer, and rotates clockwise or anticlockwise around the main shaft One side of the false bottom is connected with the bottom side of the diaphragm through a hinge, and the other side is supported by two rollers on the inner and outer tracks of the base When the false bottom is closed (the material grid starts to load), the small rollers slowly move on the circular track and hold the materials in the material grid During the moving process, the material is soaked by the extraction solution sprayed from the upper part of the equipment for many times, and the extraction process of repeatedly soaking, draining, soaking and draining is repeated The effective ingredients are gradually extracted out Finally, the fresh solvent is used to spray and soak again, and then enter the dripping stage After dribbling, the wet material falls into the hopper and is sent to the desolvent by the material conveying machine to recover the solvent in the wet material The extraction liquid sprayed on the medicinal materials drips to the collection lattice at the lowest part of the bottom of the extractor through the false bottom The bottom of the collection lattice is not horizontal, but inclined from the inside to the outside, which can prevent the powder in the extraction liquid from depositing at the bottom of the collection lattice At the lowest part of each cell, there is an extraction liquid outlet pipe Pump the extracted liquid to each spray pipe above the cell to extract the material The concentration of the extract in the collecting cell is related to the location The concentration of the last collecting cell is the lowest because it is finally sprayed with fresh solvent without the extract; the concentration of the extract near the new material is the highest The increasing direction of extraction concentration from low to high is opposite to the moving direction of material, forming countercurrent leaching The high concentration extract is filtered and sent to the next process for treatment Different kinds of Chinese herbal medicines are extracted with different solvents and temperatures The equipment is equipped with a heating device to ensure that the temperature of the mixed extract and fresh solvent sprayed into the extractor can meet the process requirements The automatic control is adopted in the whole extraction process of the horizontal rotary extractor, which can control the rotating speed of the equipment, the feeding amount, the injection amount and the temperature of the solvent and the extraction solution, and realize the online measurement of the technical indexes of the extraction solution according to the needs It can also be used for automatic control of solvent recovery and after-treatment of extraction solution It depends on the variety of traditional Chinese medicine and the requirements of extraction process The power consumption of horizontal rotation extractor is much smaller than that of other extractors After multi-stage countercurrent extraction, the number of solvent cycle extraction is more, the amount of solvent is less, the amount of steam required is also correspondingly saved a lot, the effective components are less, and the extraction yield is high The horizontal rotary extractor is simple in structure and convenient in manufacture, and the same type of oil extraction equipment has been set up for production The equipment has good sealing performance and stable production and operation Even if organic solvent is used, it can completely meet the explosion-proof requirements A test-based, 10 ton per day horizontal rotation continuous extraction equipment for traditional Chinese medicine installed in a Chinese medicine factory in China is based on the 30 ton / day horizontal rotation plant oil extractor as the prototype It realizes the full automatic control of feeding, extraction, material drying solvent recovery, extraction liquid evaporation and extraction drying, greatly reducing labor intensity and improving production conditions Compared with the multi-functional extraction tank, it has the advantages of low investment, large production capacity, high degree of automation and good production conditions 2 Although the tank group continuous extractor has many advantages, it has not been understood and accepted by the manufacturer for various reasons, so the tank group continuous extractor, another semi continuous extractor, has been widely used in actual production Compared with the horizontal rotary extractor, the tank group continuous extractor can not be regarded as the continuous extraction equipment in a strict sense The effective component residual rate and steam consumption are higher than the former, and the investment and floor area are also higher, but it also has its advantages First, the tank extractor is the equipment used more in the extraction of traditional Chinese medicine The user is more familiar with it, and it is easier to connect it than the horizontal rotary extractor Suffer Secondly, the tank group continuous extractor is composed of a single extraction tank, each tank can be adjusted and controlled according to the process requirements, the extraction process is simple and easy to control, and the adaptability to the variety, quantity, solvent and extraction method of traditional Chinese medicine is greater, which is liked by many traditional Chinese medicine extraction plants A health product factory in Zhejiang Province has two tank group extraction production lines, one with water as the solvent, and the other with ethanol as the solvent, the daily treatment capacity is slightly smaller than the former It can be operated in a single tank or extracted continuously The automatic detection and control level of the two production lines is very high Important technical parameters such as solvent dosage, temperature, specific weight of extraction solution can be detected online, and the extraction process can be adjusted and controlled by computer according to the detection data Compared with the horizontal rotary extractor, the tank group extractor is more suitable for the soaking extraction of traditional Chinese medicine materials with the operating temperature above 100 ℃, and has better adaptability to the quantity of raw materials and the production process, so it is more widely used in the extraction of traditional Chinese medicine 3 The main equipment of the screw continuous extraction machine is a screw conveyor with a jacket Materials are continuously added from one end of the equipment and pushed to the other end through the movement of the screw blade The solvent is added from the other end to one end of the feed of traditional Chinese medicine, during which the solid material is completely immersed in the solvent, and flows reversely with the solvent, so that the effective components can be dissolved as much as possible The amount of solvent needed is small and the concentration of extraction solution is high, which can save the energy needed for concentration; however, the backmixing of solid materials and solvent is serious, which reduces the extraction efficiency At present, the daily processing capacity of the equipment is low and its practical value is not high 3 Existing problems and development prospect: the flat rotation continuous extractor for traditional Chinese medicine has the advantages of large processing capacity, low production cost, less investment, good sealing performance when using organic solvent and high safety degree, especially suitable for single agent or single side large-scale extraction However, there are still many difficulties in practical application to industrial production At present, most of the traditional Chinese medicine extraction production lines still use intermittent extraction equipment The main reasons are as follows: first, the extraction of traditional Chinese medicine involves the production process corresponding to the equipment The new technology and new equipment may not adapt to the extraction of the original varieties In order to avoid the risk of selecting the wrong equipment, traditional Chinese medicine manufacturers prefer to choose the intermittent extraction equipment with the flow Second, the production capacity of continuous extraction equipment is large At present, a single traditional Chinese medicine preparation variety can achieve this extraction yield Third, there are obstacles in policies and regulations for continuous extraction equipment The national pharmacopoeia prescribes the production method of traditional Chinese medicine preparation, but does not