Development of environmentally safe technologies for the extraction of plant raw materials

Abstract

The peculiarity of solid bodies of organic origin, in contrast to solid bodies of mineral origin, is that their internal structure is characterized by the presence of two spaces – cellular and intercellular. Such bodies tend to swell upon contact with the extractant. The phenomenon of swelling, during extraction, is always accompanied by the dissolution of target substances contained in the cellular and intercellular space. All these processes create conditions for the diffusion of the dissolved target substance through the cell membrane into the intercellular space, and then through the intercellular space beyond the boundaries of the solid phase particle. This helps to increase the volumes of the cellular and intercellular environment. The absolute value of the volumes of cellular and intercellular spaces is one of the most important values when developing and calculating extraction processes and forecasting environmentally safe technologies for obtaining biologically active compounds. The work presents a method of experimentally calculating the volumes of intercellular and cellular spaces of medicinal plant raw materials of various morphological organs. The established absolute values of the volumes of the cellular and intercellular spaces make it possible to calculate the order of diffusion coefficients of biologically active compounds in the medium of the intercellular space, as well as in the cell membrane. In the future, the determined values of the volumes provide grounds for predicting the regime, kinetics and dynamics of extraction of target substances during the implementation of an environmentally safe technology for obtaining biologically active compounds in production, as well as to support the monitoring of production processes of extraction in digital mode.