Abstract

The article summarizes a systematic process design for the extraction and purification of artemisinin from annual mugwort (Artemisia annua L.). Artemisinin serves as an anti-malaria drug, therefore, resource-efficient and economic processes for its production are needed. The process design was based on lab-scale experiments and afterwards piloted on miniplant-scale at the institute. In this part of the article, a detailed economic feasibility studies including a reference process as a benchmark the lab-scale process and the pilot-scale process is given. Relevant differences between the different scales are discussed. The details of the respective unit operations (solid-liquid extraction, liquid-liquid extraction, chromatography and crystallization) are presented in dedicated articles. The study showed that even miniaturized lab-scale experiments are able to deliver data detailed enough for scale-up calculations on a theoretical basis. To our knowledge, a comparable systematic process design and piloting was never performed by academia before.

Highlights

  • The demand for natural derived products is still growing [1,2]

  • One example is the anti-cancer drug Paclitaxel® which is produced by semi-synthesis from the precursor 10-deacetylbaccatin III, that is found in the needles of European yew (Taxus baccata L.)

  • The process design originates from a lab-scale process development based on the complex plant extract as the feed

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Summary

Introduction

The demand for natural derived products is still growing [1,2]. Among others, they are used as highly purified products derived from plant extracts for the treatment of various diseases. Annual operating costs amount to €8.4 extraction and purification of artemisinin, synthesis was investigated. In addition toisolation the shown effort was put intosolvents new, or to rather enhanced, efficiency of the solid-liquid extraction step Real to find potential candidates and performed efficiency of the solid-liquid extraction step The screening included even non-conventional solvents in terms ofand solidthe characteristics of the plant material optimization of extraction is always a multi-parameter have been investigated; whole processes and value chains single unit operations in the downstream of artemisinin have been assessed [22]. Costly unit operations, such as chromatography, benefit from that investigation because not all substances have to be separated, but the right ones

Results and Discussion
Economic
Investment Costs
Comparison and Evaluation
The errorerror barsbars reflect the accuracy of the as shown in Table
Conclusions

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