Hello, I was wondering if I could take up somebodies time who knows about making organic extracts for a while please
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I have this problem, I would like to be able to extract some purified flavanols from blueberry leaves to give to a friend of mine (hes very lazy). I have had a look around & cant find what I'm looking for commercially you see so could somebody please explain to me a step by step process of how some1 could complete this 'experiment' properly & decock the right ingredients out into capsules, i'm worried about being left with the wrong extracts.
The information that I've been looking at is here:
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2010/0055065.htmlI'm stuck on knowing if it wants me to continously dry the liquids (eg. acetone) for the ingredients within the extraction fluids, not the tannins & what kind of filter to use (I'm a layman myself).
If somebody could please provide a more simple guide of how even some cowboy could do this in his garage using jars ect. I would be much obliged! Here's the extraction method from the text:
(Hope it makes sense)
(1) Pretreatment step: First of all, blueberry leaves are washed with water and filtered to remove unusable miscellaneous things therefrom. The unwanted components such as cellulose, chlorophyll etc. in the crude material after washing are distilled away with organic solvent. As the organic solvent, chloroform, hexane, acetone etc. and the combination thereof can be properly used. The distillate may be supplied to next step directly or after pulverizing with or without drying. Extracted or squeezed juice from the crude material can also be supplied as well. Before supplying next step, the extracted or squeezed juice may be condensed, dried and pulverized into powder.
Any conventional dryer can be used in this invention, so long as changing nature of chemicals in the crude material. For instance, a vacuum-freeze dryer, a hot air dryer, a far-infrared radiation dryer, a reduced-pressure dryer, a micro-wave reduced-pressure dryer, a super-heated steam dryer etc. can be used. Among them, the vacuum-freeze dryer is more useful, because of having few effects on the nature of the chemicals. The Vacuum-freeze dryer should be used under the designated condition depending on the state of leaves to be processed. For example, in case of fresh leaves, it is desirable that freezing temperature is from −30 to −20° C.; drying temperature from −30 to 30° C.; and drying period 15 to 24 hours.
(2) Extract step: The processed material in the former steps is then extracted with a solvent or solvents through single or multiple steps. In the extract process, the solvents may be used either alone or the combination thereof. For example, water or polar solvent compatible with water can be preferably used. As the solvent compatible with water, there are lower alkyl alcohol with numbers of carbon 1 to 4, such as methanol, ethanol, propanol, butanol etc. and polyol such as ethylene glycol, butylene glycol, propylene glycol, glycerin etc. Among them, lower alkyl alcohol such as methanol or ethanol may be practical in terms of safety.
Other organic solvent, such as acetone, diethyl ether, dioxane, acetonitrile, ethyl acetate, xylene, chloroform, toluene, hexane etc. can also be used. These solvents may be used in either single or the combination thereof, such as the combination of water and polar solvent compatible with water. For instance, the mixed solvent of acetone and ethyl ether can be used preferably in the ratio of 1:1 by v/v. It is general to use the mixture of water and polar solvent as the mixed aqueous solvent. As aqueous alkyl alcohol, aqueous methanol and ethanol may be preferably used. The alcohol content in the aqueous alcohol is in the range of 5 to 90 percents, preferably 30 to 90 percents, more preferably 50 to 90 percents. It is recommended to use mixed alcohol solvent containing water or acetone in this invention.
In the extraction process, the processed material in above steps is immersed in cool or warm solvent. It is usually extracted under warming and agitating and then filtrated to give extracted liquid. For example, the extraction may be preferably carried out using an aqueous alcohol solvent containing 80 volume percents of alcohol at room temperature and for immersion periods of 30 to 60 minutes depending on the extracting temperature. The extraction can be done by percolation method too.
(3) Purification step: The impure solid materials can be removed from the obtained extract by filtration or centrifugal separation to give pure filtrate, if needed. The filtrate may be supplied to the next step directly, or after partially condensed by distillation or dried. Further, these condensed or dried materials can be further purified by the method such as column method or fractionation method with solvent (See; WO2000-64883).