Herbal and natural products refer to compounds present in nature with unique pharmacological applications. Natural medicines made from these products have been used for many years for the prevention and cure of a range of human diseases. To this day, they play an important role in drug development.
But, the extraction of natural medicines to isolate the bioactive products through chemical synthesis is expensive and complex. Also, not all products can be isolated with this method. The other processes are time-consuming and often tedious. This is why membrane solutions are used to filter, separate, clarify, and extract herbal and natural products.
Herbal and natural products refer to compounds present in nature with unique pharmacological applications. Microfiltration, Ultrafiltration, Nanofiltration, and Reverse Osmosis are the membrane solutions used for herbal extracts. A few details of the same are as follows.
Clarification of herbal extracts
Clarification requires the use of microfiltration. It removes sub-micron particles that contribute to and sterilizes the filtrate. It retains all the large molecules, suspended solids, colloids, and microbes, making the solution clear for the next processing step.
Concentration or separation of herbal extracts
The next step is the concentration of herbal extracts, which requires the following:
- Ultrafiltration: Ultrafiltration involves desalting the filtrate, fractionation, and macro-molecule concentration. It also removes impurities such as salts, sugars, and organics thus purifying interest products.
- Nanofiltration: This step helps in the enrichment of extract composed of active molecules and also helps in the desalting of extract.
- Reverse Osmosis: RO is responsible for post-treatment to yield higher concentrates. It operates in low or moderate temperatures. RO also helps in the recovery of water for recycling back for the extraction process.
Recovering solvents from herbal extracts
Solvent recovery is carried out through nanofiltration. Nanofiltration is the preferred unit of operation for the concentration and recovery of heat-sensitive products instead of the distillation process. Moreover, the NF process is also a more economical process to concentrate the extract and recover solvents compared to distillation. This process works for multiple natural products such as beetroot, nicotine, aloe vera, fenugreek, stevia …etc
Premionics solutions for herbal and natural products
Permionics employs the revolutionary SOLREC installed system that works on nanofiltration. It works on the concentration and separation of herbal extracts while recovering solvents.
The system is efficient, economical, and energy-saving. It recovers 80-90% of the solvent and enables 5-10x enrichment of the herbal extract.
For more details, we invite you to visit our website.
