中药提取液浓缩新工艺和新技术进展

The progress of the concentration technology of extract of traditional Chinese medicine

中药提取液的浓缩是中药制药的重要工序之一。目前存在着浓缩温度高,浓缩时间长,有效成分及挥发性成分有损失,一步浓缩难以实现高相对密度的质量要求,设备易结垢,废液排放等问题。为了解决这些问题,开发了一系列先进的中药提取液浓缩新工艺和新技术,主要包括:悬浮冷冻浓缩、渐进冷冻浓缩、自然外循环两相流浓缩、在线防挂壁三相流浓缩、反渗透、膜蒸馏、渗透蒸馏、大孔吸附树脂分离浓缩等。因为中药提取液体系非常复杂,有水提取液和醇提取液等;提取液除含有效成分外,还含有一定量的鞣质、蛋白、胶类、糖类和树脂等杂质,所以需要对这些浓缩新工艺和新技术各自的特点、适应性、工艺和技术成熟度等加以了解,从而选择保持中医药特色,具有很强的适应性,不存在各种浓缩问题,技术成熟度高的浓缩新工艺和新技术。分析了近年来出现的中药提取液浓缩新工艺和新技术的特点及应用价值,并提出了进一步努力的方向,以期为中药制药企业等选择合适的浓缩新工艺和新技术提供参考和借鉴。

The concentration of extract of traditional Chinese medicine （TCM） is one of the important unit operations that affect the quality of the pharmaceutical products. However, there are some problems to he solved. The concentration process has the shortages of relatively high temperature, relatively long time or low efficient, some losses of active and volatile ingredients, more operation steps, easy fouling and emission of waste water. In order to salve these problems, many new technologies and installations have been developed in the past thirty years, including suspemion freeze-concentration, progressive freeze-concentration, single- or multi-effect evaporation with an external natural circulating flow, on-line preventing fouling evaporation with vapor-liquid-solid flow, reverse osmosis concentration, membrane distillation, osmotic distillation, macro-porous resin adsorption etc. The system of the extract of TCM is very complex. The extract includes water and alcohol extracts. The composition of TCM is made of active and inactive ingredients. Hence, it is necessary to master the features of every concentra- tion technologies and imtallations, including their merits and demerits, flexibilities, degree of maturations of techniques and so on to get a wise choice for the industry applications. New concentration technologies and installations of the extract of TCM developed recently are reviewed in this paper. The characteristics of each method are analyzed and discussed in order to guide the industry applications. At the same time, the further research directions of concentration techniques of extract of TCM are also given.