Study On Decoction Process And Optimal Comminution Granularity Of Raix Scutellariae

With the development of modern comminution technology and equipment, the comminution of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has become a very important content of modernization of TCM. There are many advantages to decrease the comminution granularity of TCM, such as improving the absorptance and using efficiency, economizing resource of medicinal materials, and so on. But if the comminution granularity is too small, some new problems will come into being. The new problems maybe include strengthening the sorption of surface, easy to absorb air and generate charge, blocking the absorption of effective compositions, generating some new bad reaction or toxic effect, etc. Therefore, it will have important realistic significance and great value in theory to study the optimal comminution granularity of TCM. In the paper, Raix Scutellariae, a kind of rhizomatic TCM, was chosen as research object. HPLC was used to measure the stripping content of Baicalin which is the indexing composition of Raix Scutellariae. Through orthogonal experiment, water-decoction process of Raix Scutellariae was studied by considering the comminution granularity of Raix Scutellariae, time for decoction, amount of water and times for decoction. The result indicated that the comminution granularity of Raix Scutellariae is the most important factor which affect the content of Baicalin and extract ratio. According to the influencing degree, the order from the maximum to the minimum is expressed as: comminution granularity, times for decoction, time for decoction, amount of water. The optimal parameters of decoction process were put forward as:(1) the average comminution granularity is 2.5mm; (2) time for decoction is 20 minutes; (3) times for decoction is 3 times; (4)amount of water is as 12 times as the weight of Raix Scutellariae. On base of the study of water-decoction process, some appropriate parameters were selected to study the content of Baicalin with different comminution granularity. It can be concluded that the content of Baicalin increases with the decrease of comminution granularity when the comminution granularity is big, and the content of Baicalin does not change very much with the increase of comminution granularity when the comminution granularity is small enough. After the comminution granularity exceeds a certain scope, the content of Baicalin will decrease with the decrease of comminution granularity. Therefore there exists an optimal range of comminution granularity. Under the experiment condition in this paper, the optimal range of comminution granularity is from 1.5mm to 2.5mm. In the paper, the extract process has also been analyzed in theory on base of the experiment research, and the reason why the optimal range of comminution granularity of Raix Scutellariae exists. The work will give a academic proof to found quality control standard of Raix Scutellariae.