Today, let’s talk about the volatile oil of Angelica sinensis, the dried root of Angelica sinensis in Chinese medicine.
Angelica
Angelica, the name of Chinese medicine. It is the dried root of Angelica, a plant of the Umbelliferae family.
It is mainly produced in the southeastern part of Gansu, China. Min County has high yield and good quality, followed by Yunnan, Sichuan, Shaanxi, Hubei and other provinces, all of which are cultivated. It has the effects of nourishing blood and promoting blood circulation, regulating menstruation and relieving pain, moistening the intestines and laxative. It is commonly used for blood deficiency and chlorosis, dizziness, palpitations, irregular menstruation, amenorrhea, dysmenorrhea, deficiency and cold abdominal pain, rheumatism arthralgia, falling flutter injury, carbuncle sore, intestinal dryness and constipation. Liquor Angelica Huoxue Tongjing. Used for amenorrhea, dysmenorrhea, rheumatic arthralgia, and fall and flutter injury.
The volatile oil of angelica currently sold on the market is basically the essential oil extracted by distillation, and the extraction rate of angelica by distillation is low.
Today I will mainly talk about the volatile oil of angelica extracted by supercritical CO2.
Extraction of volatile oil of angelica
The most commonly used Chinese angelica from Minxian County, Gansu has the best quality.
How to dry angelica
There are drying (fumigation), freeze-drying, sun-drying, and the output ratio and quality of the volatile oil are freeze-drying>sun-drying>drying.
Since freeze-drying is relatively rare, sun-drying and drying are commonly used. Extract from whole plant slices.
Active ingredient part
Angelica volatile oil is divided into head extraction, middle extraction, tail extraction, and whole plant extraction.
The head has the highest oil yield, followed by the whole plant, again in the middle, and last in the tail.
The effect of angelica tail is to promote blood circulation and remove blood stasis. Compared with angelica body and angelica head, it has a stronger blood circulation effect and is especially suitable for breaking blood.
It can treat the human body’s deficiency, such as indigestible food caused by weak spleen and stomach, anemia and other related symptoms. It can also treat blood stasis, especially for women with irregular menstruation, blood stasis, abdominal pain, dysmenorrhea, and postpartum lochia, which can be adjusted and treated with angelica tail.
Angelica sinensis has a significant effect of nourishing blood.
Supercritical CO2 extraction
Supercritical CO2 extraction technology has the advantages of low operating temperature, effective components not easily broken down, high extraction yield, and no solvent residues.
We have compared the traditional co-water distillation method and supercritical CO2 extraction method to extract the volatile oil of Angelica sinensis. The content of ketones is not much different, but the extraction rate of supercritical extraction is more than 3 times that of co-water distillation.
Supercritical CO2 extraction parameters: extraction pressure 25MPa, temperature 50°C, separation pressure 10MPa, separation temperature 40°C, time 120 minutes.