Extraction of medicinal plants for analysis

Extraction is an important step in the analysis of medicinal plants. In this process, the chemical components are extracted from the plant material for further separation and analysis. This allows, for example, the substance in a plant that is responsible for its medicinal effect to be determined.

This is what one customer from India* does to obtain plant extracts: The company processes a wide variety of medicinal and aromatic plants, including tea, roses, stevia leaves, marigolds, and lavender. The plants are washed and then either traditionally dried in the oven or freeze-dried. Then the plant material is ground to increase the surface area in contact with the solvent system chosen for extraction. This is followed by the actual extraction step, in which the plant material is extracted with various organic-aqueous solutions in a large-scale rotary evaporator and separated from the solvent directly afterwards. During the entire process, special attention must be paid to ensuring that potentially active substances are not lost, altered, or destroyed.

For this purpose, the customer uses a Laborota 20 (predecessor of Hei-VAP Industrial) for the manual processing of smaller batches and a Distimatic Industrial Platinum 6 Package for the automated processing of larger volumes.

Distimatic Industrial Platinum 6 Package

• Glassware with backflow valve for extraction
• Extraction solvents can be reused multiple times thanks to very good separation performance
• Large volumes of extracts can be processed automatically

* Anonymized on customer request