A New Approach for Process Development of Plant‐Based Extraction Processes

Abstract

Over the last few years the impact of products from natural sources in food, nutraceuticals, cosmetics, flavors/fragrances, and also the pharmaceutical industry has increased due to the consumer demand for nature-derived products. Meeting this demand requires that existing manufacturing processes have to be optimized and process development for a variety of new products, sometimes with short life cycles, has to be accelerated. A scientific literature review covering equipment and modeling for plant-based extractions shows an enormous demand for new approaches in process design for solvent extraction, isolation, and purification of ingredients from botanical sources and its transfer from academic research into manageable solutions for industrial use. An approach combining the design of experiments and rigorous process modeling on the one hand and an intensified collaboration between different disciplines including process engineering, botany, and analytical chemistry on the other hand seems to be the only way forward to address the current issues and shortcomings systematically and efficiently. Hence, a standard apparatus for the assessment of the governing process parameters for plant-based extraction processes is proposed.

Systematic and Model-Assisted Evaluation of Solvent Based- or Pressurized Hot Water Extraction for the Extraction of Artemisinin from Artemisia annua L.

“…The fractions serve for the determination of the extraction curve. The experimental setups have already been described by the authors [1,29].…”

“…Thus, the most important extraction technique to achieve this aim is percolation. For process design and optimization, modeling and simulation was proven to be a beneficial approach [1,3,4,7,29,31]. Commonly, the extraction in percolation mode is described with various sub models which will be described in the following in detail.…”

“…Because artemisinin is a product with high added value, a complete leaching is desirable. Therefore, percolation is chosen for this study [3,4,6,29].…”

Combination of Rigorous and Statistical Modeling for Process Development of Plant‐Based Extractions Based on Mass Balances and Biological Aspects

“…Structured approaches for process development of plantbased solvent extractions and state of the art for equipment and modeling already have been described before [2]. A combination of botanical aspects, lab-scale experiments, and rigorous modeling is supposed to support a fundamental methodology for the desired development in industrial scale.…”

Integration of Ultrafiltration Unit Operations in Biotechnology Process Design

“…Moreover, nonidealities have to be taken into account, if process integration and optimization are the main tasks [8][9][10][11]. By this, any thermodynamically feasible process concept needs to be proven experimentally with all equipment and operation fluiddynamic and kinetic nonidealities contained [12][13][14]. Therefore, an in reality achievable process optimum is, besides the thermodynamical feasibility, necessary for any further development decision.…”