A Non-solid Material, A Low-loss Fast Separation Technology

Foam flotation technology has made great achievements and recognition in the mining boom at the start of this century. The purpose of our study is to use this technology to separate and extract the active ingredients of the medicinal plants. At present the saponin production of our country adopts the traditional craft, which is natural fermentation/acid hydrolysis, this craft don't make use of starch and other resources of the Turmeric, which contains 30 to 40 percent of the starch. The acid consumption is great in hydrolysis process. The environment pollution is very serious, and the yield of saponin is low. We use froth flotation technique to extract Turmeric and fructus ligustri lucidi saponin, then study the difference between this craft and other conventional extraction technologies. It is a practical exploration to use this novel technology to extract and separate effective components of medical plants.Objective:Turmeric, fructus ligustri lucidi and tribulus terrestris are commonly used medicines in China, and their main medicinal ingredients are diosgenin saponin and fructus ligustri lucidi saponins respectively. Saponin is a surface-active substance, fructus ligustri lucidi contains flavonoids, many kinds of amino acids, fatty acid, polysaccharide, naphtha and so on, which are not surface-active substances, thus we can introduce foam flotation technology used commonly in metallurgical industry into natural medicinal chemistry in order to separate and extract the saponin constituents, for glycosides and sapogenins of this molecular structure exhibit the dynamic equilibrium intramolecularly between hydrophilic and lipophilic characters.Methods:We use froth flotation method to preconcentrate saponin. Our study adopts single factor quality method to determine the systems of foaming agent in flotation process, the proportion of each element in foaming systems and the amount of surfactants; thereby we can preconcentrate the turmeric and fructus ligustri lucidi in order to attain a good effect in purification of these two medicinal material saponins. According to the determination of starch content in turmeric, the directional fermentation condition of turmeric starch and the study of variation of consumption of acid in acid hydrolysis after fermentation of turmeric. This research provides a new craft called forth flotation method, which can extract the saponin by directional fermentation of turmeric, then refer to extraction methods of each element in plants and recovers pectin and water-solubility saponins from industrial wastewater respectively by using ethanol precipitation and adsorption effect of diatomite.Conclusion:We use the ultrasonic extraction, hot reflux extraction, saxhlet extraction and forth flotation method to extract the saponin of two drugs, then make a comparison between the extraction effect of the these four crafts, then discuss the factors that can affect the extraction yield of forth flotation method we optimize the best extraction condition; then proceed the separation and preconcentration of saponin in coarse extraction liquid of turmeric and fructus ligustri lucidi by using froth flotation method, solvent flotation method, solvent extraction and foam flotation-extraction respectively. We optimize the experimental parameters which can affect froth flotation method. These factors include initial concentration of feed liquid of flotation, the acidity of test solution, time of flotation,flow rate of nitrogen, electrolyte and so on, then we can establish the best experimental parameter.The smooth development of this research has a far-reaching significance for introducing froth flotation method into natural medical chemistry, and it is appropriate for the production of effective ingredients of large-scale extraction in drugs, furthermore it can provide a reliable theoretical basis for this craft.