Advantages And Disadvantages Of Plant Extraction

Introduction: Extraction is used pharmaceutically in the removal of active constituent of part of plants or animal tissues from inactive or inert components (which may be a liquid or a solid) by treating it with liquid solvent, by different methods of extraction (infusion, decoction, maceration, percolation) and the material produced from plant should be in powdered form for attempting the extraction process. The reason behind using the extraction process is to obtain the therapeutically active constituent and to eliminate inert material by treating it with a selective solvent known as “menstrum”.

Definition of infusion:

Infusion is one of the extraction methods and can be defined as the removal of chemical substances or flavors from plant material by adding a suitable solvent.

Infusion method

(ii) Water is a good medium for mold and bacterial growth.

(iii)Water promotes hydrolysis of many substances and allows enzymatic actions to take place.

Alcohol:

Advantages:

(i) Reasonably selective.

(ii) Molds cannot grow in a solvent mixture containing more than 20 % ethanol.

(iii) Non-toxic.

(iv) It is neutral.

(v) Latent heat of vaporization is less than water, so less heat will be consumed to make an extract concentrated.

(vi) Can be mixed in any combination with water.

Disadvantage:

Cost due increases due to the duty imposed by the Government on it

Conclusion:

In this discussion I’ve talked about the definition of extraction and sorts of it and why do we use these extraction methods.

The definition of infusion, the types of drugs used to extract by this method, explained how the process of infusion is done, and the apparatus used in this technique, also the types of infusion (concentrated and fresh) and examples for each one of them. Also, the features of this method are that it doesn’t take a long time, also it can do with boiling or cold water and the active ingredient, at last, will be readily soluble.