Application Of Membrane Separation Technology In Separation Of Plant Extract And Removal Of Endotoxin

With the rapid development of science and technology and people's increasing attention to health, plant extract market is gradually becoming a new trend of health industry. Plant extract refers to the effective components extracted from plants, which has the advantages of high safety, remarkable effect and small side effects. With the deepening of research on plant at home and abroad, the application scope of plant extracts has been expanding, covering many fields such as food, drugs, health food, daily chemical products, cosmetics, aquaculture inputs and so on. According to statistics, in 2023, China's export volume of plant extracts was 23.88 billion yuan, with a global market share of more than 20%, ranking first in the world.

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The composition of plant is very complicated, and the effective monomer can be obtained only by extracting the active component and further separating and purifying it. The extraction of plant is an important unit operation in the production process of traditional plant. The selection of process method, process procedure and equipment configuration will directly affect the quality and clinical effect of plant.

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The following is the production process of general plant extracts.

In recent years, with the continuous development of plant extraction and separation technology, the high-tech applied in the extraction and separation of plant are: supercritical fluid extraction, membrane separation technology, ultrafine grinding technology, plant flocculation separation technology, semi-bionic extraction method, ultrasonic extraction method, swirl extraction method, pressure countercurrent extraction method, enzyme method, macroporous resin adsorption method, ultrafiltration method, molecular distillation method, etc.

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Tangential flow filtration is a widely used membrane separation technology, and hollow fiber membrane is an important form of membrane separation. In unit volume membrane components, hollow fiber membrane has the largest effective membrane area, high filtration and separation efficiency, easy to clean, simple structure, convenient operation, and no secondary pollution in the production process, so it is widely used. Hollow fiber membrane is one of the most important forms of membrane filtration. The membrane is capillary and micropores are located on the tube wall. The solution is separated by whether its components can pass through these micropores.

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The following is the application case of Guidling Technology hollow fiber in traditional plant extraction.

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Separated active monomer

We used 0.15m2 0.22μm hollow fiber (HEM022U10030) to clarify 12L of a traditional plant extract. In the whole process of microfiltration, the recovery rate, turbidity change and membrane flux depletion were investigated.

0-150min is the concentration process, 150-170min is the washing and filtration process. During the whole microfiltration process, TMP gradually increased, the liquid inlet speed remained unchanged, and the average material flux was 30LMH.

The turbidity of the liquid before microfiltration was 500NTU, and the turbidity of the liquid after microfiltration was 1NTU, the turbidity changed obviously.

12L liquid filtration plus 3 times washing filtration to 13L, the total recovery of the target material 98.6%; Guidling Technology 0.22μm hollow fiber can run stably and is suitable for this application scenario.

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Endotoxin removal

We used 0.15m2 10kd hollow fiber (HEM001010030) for ultrafiltration of 2.4L clarified feed solution to remove endotoxin. In the whole process of ultrafiltration, the recovery rate of target material, the removal rate of endotoxin, membrane flux exhaustion and water flux recovery rate were investigated.

Before and after use, we tested the water flux of the membrane. Under the premise of maintaining the same feed speed, feed pressure and return pressure, the recovery rate of hollow fiber reached 95%.

0-32min is the concentration process, 32-73min is the washing and filtration process. During the whole microfiltration process, TMP gradually increased, the liquid inlet speed remained unchanged, and the average material flux was 24LMH.

After 2.4L liquid filtration +3 times washing and filtration to 4.4L, the total recovery of target material was 90.2%, and the removal rate of endotoxin was 99.9%. Guidling Technology 10kd hollow fiber can run stably and can be qualified for this application scenario.

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The quality of plant products depends on the extraction and separation of plant to a large extent. Tangential flow filtration technology plays an important role in improving the quality of plant. Tangential flow filtration technology can not only be used to remove macromolecular impurities in plant, such as pyrogen, tannin and protein, but also to concentrate. Generally speaking, in most plant extracts, the concentration of the target product is relatively low, and the produced product usually needs to be dried or concentrated in a large proportion to achieve, then tangential flow filtration technology can be used to remove the inorganic salts and water in the extract, so as to achieve the concentration of plant extracts.

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Guidling Technology microfiltration hollow fiber can well separate the effective monomer of plant, generally can reduce the turbidity of the material liquid to less than 10NTU, wash and filter 3 times, the recovery rate can reach 98%, fully meet the needs of subsequent operations. Guidling Technology ultrafiltration hollow fiber can effectively remove endotoxin, wash and filter twice, and the effective monomer recovery can reach 90%.