Grant: Strategic Projects - Group

Podophyllotoxin and saponins are natural medicinal compounds which have anticancer activity as well as other important pharmacological functions. Considering continuously growing demands for medicinal and nutraceutical products including podophyllotoxin and saponins in North America, the development of more efficient extraction processes would meet an urgent commercial demand. We propose that the extraction of natural medicinal compounds (i.e. podophyllotoxin and saponins) can be significantly improved with the aid of radio frequency (RF) heating and pulsed electric field (PEF) assisted extraction resulting in higher product yields at reduced extraction time and solvent consumption with high energy efficiency. RF heating is an emerging heating technology which provides uniform volumetric internal heating within a packed-bed solvent extraction unit at commercial scales (up to meters in diameter). Uniform internal heating of all particles and the solvent in the packed-bed extraction unit results in uniform solubility of the solute in the solvent. RF heating might improve mass diffusion because mass diffusivity increase with extraction temperature exponentially. In PEF-assisted extraction, the differential electric pressure between the cell interior and the exterior of the cell membranes is so large that the cell membranes are damaged. Therefore the most important resistance to solute transfer, the cell wall, becomes permeable to the solute and then the difrusivity and solubility increase. A combinational approach of RF-PEF assisted extraction can synergistically enhance the solvent extraction of natural medicinal compounds, including podophyllotoxin and saponins. To achieve high efficiencies in RF-PEF assisted packed-bed solvent extraction of bio-components (i.e. podophyllotoxin and saponins) the research project will involve experimental apparatus development, characterization of RF and PEF extraction processes, characterization of hinm^teriql properti^ experimental procedures for RF-PEF assisted packed-bed solvent extraction techniques, comparison with other extraction methods, and modeling, simulation and optimization of RF-PEF process.