Extraction of plant extracts in the food industry

Plant extracts are used frequently in the food industry. Plants are mixed with solvents and their constituents are extracted, particularly for flavoring purposes. Depending on the plant species, further raw extract processing steps follow, for example, separation of undesirable greases due to winterizing. At the end of each extraction process the solvent must be separated out again to obtain the pure extract. This step is carried out with rotary evaporators.

A customer in the food industry* works initially on a small scale with a Hei-VAP Core benchtop rotary evaporator. It is used to separate plant extracts from hexane at 40 °C and from ethanol at 70 °C. The customer then invested in a Hei-VAP Industrial - Performance Plus Package to process large quantities and to achieve more than three times the throughput.

Hei-VAP Core G3 XL

• All parts that come into contact with media are FDA compliant

• Equipped with XL glassware for maximum distillation rates, particularly suitable for distilling ethanol and hexane

• Polished glass cooler set-up protects against grease residues in the processed product

Hei-VAP Industrial - Performance Plus Package

• High-performance glassware allows distillation rates of up to 12 L/h ethanol and up to 25 L/h hexane for plant extracts

• The flask can also be changed by one person, thanks to the flask removal device

• Data logging function documents all operations automatically