Cyclic ultrasound technology and its application in the development and production of traditional Chinese Medicine

Circular ultrasound technology and its application in the research, development and production of traditional Chinese Medicine, It is necessary to adopt advanced extraction and separation technology Therefore, extraction and separation technology has been regarded as one of the key technologies to be developed in the future In developed countries, the whole operation process of medicinal materials starts from feeding, and is carried out in a continuous closed environment with high degree of automation The crushed medicinal materials are put into the extraction equipment regularly, and the extraction solution is discharged from the extraction tank continuously Both the medicinal solution and the medicinal residue are operated in the closed pipeline, which keeps the environment clean and improves the utilization rate of medicinal materials The extraction efficiency is 3-4 times that of the conventional method, The whole production process is controlled by computer, which avoids the instability of product quality caused by human factors, so the product has international competitiveness With the interpenetration of multi-disciplinary and in-depth study of extraction materials and processes, new extraction technologies continue to emerge and apply, contributing to the improvement of the quality and technical content of traditional Chinese medicine products in China Cyclic ultrasound technology is one of them It solves the engineering amplification problem of ultrasonic extraction, greatly improves the intensity of ultrasonic field, the utilization ratio of materials to ultrasonic and the uniformity of materials to receive ultrasonic treatment Beijing hongxianglong Biotechnology Development Co., Ltd and the Process Engineering Research Institute of China Academy of sciences have successfully applied the cyclic ultrasonic extraction equipment to industrial students In production The basic principle and problems of ultrasonic extraction when the high-energy ultrasonic wave acts on the extraction medium, when the vibration is in the sparse state, the medium is torn into many small holes, these small holes are closed instantaneously, when they are closed, the instantaneous pressure of thousands of atmospheric pressure is generated, namely cavitation phenomenon The strengthening effect of ultrasonic on the extraction and separation of various components is mainly due to its cavitation The great pressure produced by the bursting of micro bubbles in cavitation makes the cell wall of the broken object and the whole organism complete in an instant, shortens the breaking time, and the vibration produced by ultrasonic enhances the release, diffusion and dissolution of the substance in the cell, which can significantly improve the extraction efficiency The ultrasonic breaking process is a physical process, in which there is no chemical reaction, and the biologically active substances extracted remain unchanged When cavitation occurs, a series of dynamic processes, such as oscillation, growth, contraction and collapse, occur in the micro bubble core in the liquid under the action of high-intensity ultrasound At the same time, in the very short time of collapse, high temperature, high pressure, strong shock wave and micro jet with speed over 400 km ö h per hour are generated around the cavitation bubble, A new active surface was created for the stripping, pitting and grinding of the solid surface, which increased the mass transfer surface area The turbulent effect caused by cavitation makes the mass transfer boundary layer in the solid-liquid interface thin, which results in the decrease of solute concentration gradient in the interface layer much faster than other methods The micro disturbance effect caused by cavitation strengthens the micropore diffusion in the solid-liquid mass transfer process, strengthens the eddy diffusion and accelerates the extraction process With the increase of ultrasonic frequency and extraction time, the energy gathering effect of ultrasonic field results in the increase of extraction temperature The effects of turbulence, perturbation, interface and energy accumulation are related to the frequency, power and temperature of ultrasonic field In the extraction process of natural products, cell wall breaking, solute diffusion and equilibrium speed are related to the ultrasonic power per unit area, and they will affect the extraction efficiency and recovery rate Therefore, low-frequency high-power ultrasound is generally used Although ultrasonic extraction has a good effect in the preparation of small amount of samples in the laboratory and has been widely used, especially in the processing of analytical samples, its fast and characteristic has been widely recognized, but the scope and intensity of ultrasonic field limit the amount of materials processed each time, and the lack of effective process amplification means and methods limit its application in large-scale production 2 Development background of cyclic ultrasonic extraction technology In view of the problem of Engineering scale-up existing in the process of ultrasonic extraction in China, the researchers of the State Key Laboratory of biochemical engineering, Institute of process engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, supported by the national "863" and "Ninth Five Year Plan" key projects, took fucoidan polysaccharide and artemisinin as research objects, In this paper, the characteristics of ultrasonic extraction are studied systematically, and the principle and technology of biochemical engineering are used to solve the problem of Engineering magnification in traditional ultrasonic extraction Based on the original technology, Beijing hongxianglong Biotechnology Development Co., Ltd (h t TP: ö www Hxlbd Com) further developed a series of new countercurrent ultrasonic extraction devices suitable for Chinese herbal medicine extraction enterprises, and applied for and obtained a number of related applications At present, more than 20 products of SY, HF and SC series with effective volume ranging from several hundred ml to 5000 l have been formed, which have been used by dozens of domestic units and won the bidding in government bidding and procurement for many times Due to the solution of the problem of ultrasonic extraction engineering magnification, the application scope of ultrasonic extraction has been greatly expanded Circulatory ultrasound technology and equipment are not only suitable for the extraction of various natural products, but also can be used for ultrasonic dispersion, emulsion preparation, sustained-release drug ultrafine capsules and nanocapsules preparation, etc., and the application fields are extended to many fields such as pharmaceuticals, health products, cosmetics, food and agricultural products deep processing 3 Characteristics of the technology and equipment of cyclic ultrasonic extraction The main parameters of the new device, such as extraction time, extraction temperature, ultrasonic power and circulation speed, can be set and controlled automatically The extraction efficiency is several times to dozens of times that of the conventional extraction The extraction temperature can be reduced from 100 ℃ to room temperature (SY series products can also achieve low-temperature extraction) The performance of the device has reached the national standard The advanced level of simultaneous interpreting can save energy consumption by more than 50% compared with traditional methods, and the extraction cost can be reduced by more than 25% Intermittent extraction and multi-stage continuous dynamic extraction can be carried out The material can be run in a closed pipe, and the extraction liquid and the residue are continuously discharged The liquid is 2 solid and continuous automatic separation, which can realize manual, semi-automatic and automatic control It can save a large number of labor force and meet the requirements of GM P Through a large number of experiments, it has been proved that compared with the relevant equipment at home and abroad, the cyclic ultrasonic extraction technology and equipment have significant characteristics and advantages, mainly including: 1) efficiency · 154 · Chinese herbal medicine Ch inese t radit ional and herbald rugs Volume 37, issue 1, January 2006 x received date: 2005207220 high rate: short extraction time, extraction time is only a fraction of the conventional extraction method To a few tenths 2) Low extraction energy consumption: small power ultrasonic can crush and extract a large number of materials, which are generally extracted at room temperature, without high-power stirring and heating, and the energy consumption can be reduced by more than 50% compared with the conventional extraction method 3) High quality of the extracted product: Zui can keep the activity of various active ingredients, especially the thermosensitive ingredients, so as to improve the efficacy and reduce the dosage At the same time, due to the short extraction time and the reduction of other useless components in the extracted products, the production cost of other products such as single component can be significantly reduced 4) High extraction rate of the target extract: due to the use of ultrasonic breaking extraction technology, the effective ingredients in the medicinal materials can be fully released, so that the extraction rate of the target extract is improved Even some components that are difficult to be extracted by conventional methods can be extracted quickly 5) Wide range of application: it is suitable for volatile and non-volatile extraction media, experimental research, pilot test and industrial production of various natural products extraction, not limited by the relative molecular weight and polarity of the extract 6) High automation and easy operation: it can be used for batch extraction or multi-level continuous extraction The main parameters such as extraction time, extraction temperature and circulation speed can be set and controlled automatically, which reduces the influence of human factors on product quality and helps to ensure product quality In multi-stage continuous dynamic extraction, the extraction solution and dregs can be operated under totally closed condition, which can save a lot of labor and meet the requirements of GM P 7) High cost performance of products: the price of circulating ultrasonic extraction device is much lower than that of supercritical CO2 extraction and imported equipment The equipment occupies a small proportion of the ground and does not need auxiliary facilities such as steam, thus saving investment See Table 1 for the comparison of circulating ultrasound technology and equipment with other main ultrasonic extraction equipment Table 1 Comparison of circulating ultrason ic extraction equipment with other ultrasonic equipment, Zui up to 2800W The power intensity per unit area is ten times that of divergent ultrasound, which can meet the requirements of various cell wall breaking Divergent ultrasound is mainly used in ultrasonic cleaners The power of a single transducer is small, generally only a few to dozens of watts It is difficult to meet the requirements of various cell wall breaking and the contact mode of materials The energy accumulation transducer directly contacts with materials, and the ultrasonic utilization efficiency is 100%, All the materials are in the effective range of ultrasonic field, and the materials are quasi homogeneous The ultrasonic transducer with equal opportunity of ultrasonic treatment is embedded in the pipe wall and the extraction tank wall The ultrasonic needs to be transmitted to the materials through the wall The ultrasonic field is only distributed in a small part of the pipe circle, and the utilization rate of ultrasonic wave is low, Some over connected ultrasonic field is affected by the ultrasonic treatment direction, and the circulating ultrasonic can flow in the reverse direction or in the forward direction between the materials In the ultrasonic field, except for the mixed materials, there is no other component that affects the flow and the ultrasonic effect, and the moving direction of the materials is perpendicular to the ultrasonic field In the pipeline equipment, the ultrasonic wave is driven by the reflection and loss materials such as the propelling screw A uniform liquid-solid suspension is formed in the circulating ultrasonic equipment, which is similar to the quasi homogeneous phase Through the high-intensity ultrasonic field, the material has the same extraction opportunity The material drives the upward movement of the consumption power small pipe type equipment to rely on the screw to push upward, and the liquid flows down depending on the height difference Because of the relationship between the height difference, flow and the ultrasonic vertical effect, some fine materials are difficult to reach the top, It results in poor mixing uniformity and excessive crushing of materials, high power consumption, compact structure, small floor area and similar height to the traditional extraction tank The pipeline equipment with arbitrary adjustable material circulation speed and extraction time needs a long pipeline and sufficient height difference to ensure sufficient ultrasonic extraction time, so the floor area is large, High requirements for the plant are applicable to the extraction of various components from volatile and non-volatile solvents, totally enclosed operation, good adaptability for various materials (especially fine materials), a series of complete sets of equipment from 1000 ml to 5000 l, which can meet the requirements of laboratory, pilot test and large-scale production and use Pipeline equipment is generally suitable for pilot scale, It is difficult to achieve large-scale and super large-scale extraction because it can not meet the requirements of small sample extraction in the laboratory At present, there are dozens of practical users who have poor adaptability to strong volatile solvents, fine materials and other applications From 1000 ml to 3000 l equipment, they have been successfully applied in practice Users include domestic universities, research institutions, pharmaceutical enterprises, bioengineering companies, etc