A, plant extraction equipment status
At present the mainstream of traditional Chinese medicine extraction equipment has dipped Lu cans, multi-function extractor, dynamic extraction tank and heat reflux extraction enrichment units, such as equipment structure and operation method with single pot of oil extraction equipment are basically the same.
In recent years, the supercritical fluid extraction, ultrasonic wave strengthened extraction, microwave extraction process equipment is not enough mature, such as design on the no popup single pot extraction mode.
Here we make a simple review:
1, leaching Lu cans
The baptism of typical Lu extraction equipment.
Solvent from the upper tank to join, after extracting tank of medicinal materials from the bottom of the discharge.
Advantage is extract with good quality, less impurity and obtain high rate;
Simple equipment is easy to make maintenance.
Defect is slow speed of extraction, solvent dosage, low efficiency and large energy consumption, mass production needs a lot of extraction tank, covers an area of more than, high investment.
2, multi-function extractor
The most used extraction equipment.
Clamp with steam heating submerged herbs in solvent, soaking extraction.
Except for heating extraction, still can use airtight condensation system recovery of the volatile oil in medicine;
Using secondary or tertiary cross-flow extraction process can improve the gain rate.
Defect is tank diameter is too large, the solid material block heat transfer efficiency, material is difficult to fully cooked, so that the extraction efficiency of fall, when the mass production needs a lot of extraction tank.
3, dynamic extraction tank (plus mixing strengthening extraction)
Multi-function extractor with stirring device added.
Advantage is that under the action of medicinal powder can be suspended in the solvent, the heat transfer speed, diffusion speed is too fast, so extraction speed, high extraction rate.
Defect is medicinal materials to be processed into a fine powder of power consumption is very large.
Scum and extract separation need through centrifuge or plate and frame filter, manpower, power consumption is greater.
Unit 4, soxhlet extraction enrichment
According to the principle of soxhlet extractor multi-function extractor and concentrator together a unit.
Multi-function extractor is released extract filtered into the concentrator, concentrated after the evaporation of the solvent by the condensation when returned to the multi-function extractor, the whole process is a differential multilevel cross-flow extraction, as long as the time fully, can achieve very high extraction yield and production efficiency and extraction yield is better than the previous equipment.
But the problems existing in the multi-function extractor is also inevitable.
5, other extraction process
Supercritical fluid extraction, ultrasonic wave strengthened extraction, microwave extraction is a newly developed in recent years the extraction process.
Carbon dioxide supercritical fluid extraction has the advantage of strong selectivity, extract high purity, suitable for extracting from the solid material known chemical structure, molecular weight smaller fatty substance.
Defect is high operating pressure, high energy consumption, large amplification of equipment manufacturing costs.
Not suitable to extract unknown mixture and solubility of the smaller substances in carbon dioxide.
Ultrasonic extraction make use of the energy of ultrasonic vibration strengthening diffusion process, make it easy to solvent into solid, solid solute easy from solid internal diffusion to solid-liquid interface, thus accelerate the extraction process.
Defect is restricted by the ultrasonic power, mass production of the economy is bad, the safety of the high-power ultrasonic also needs to be verified.
Microwave extraction using microwave heating solvent and medicinal herbs, the function of polar molecules break the cell wall, achieve the goal of accelerating extraction.
Microwave extraction is also under microwave power limit, some engineering problems when enlarge the scale of production.
Process equipment above is single pot, intermittent extraction equipment, its advantage is the production of flexible, suitable for small batch more varieties of plant extract, small-scale production with less investment, etc.
The disadvantage is that the overall efficiency is low, high production cost, higher mass production investment.
The extraction process of some newly developed technical problem existed in the amplification.
Second, the development of new extraction equipment
With the development of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) modernization, will greatly increase the variety of plant extracts and quantity, demanded extraction equipment with large processing capacity, low production cost, less investment, high degree of safety when using organic solvent, the characteristics of the existing extraction equipment and process to meet the above requirements, according to the principle of continuous leaching plant design continuous extraction equipment can meet the large-scale industrialized production of traditional Chinese medicines on technical and safety requirements.
1, swing type continuous extractor
Swing type extractor is mainly composed of rotating body (rotor), false bottom screen mesh (loose), orbit, extract from,
Spray device, transmission device and so on, the entire device by the sealing surface.
