A pilot-scale homogenization-assisted negative pressure cavitation extraction of Astragalus polysaccharides

This paper reported a new, green and effective extraction technique for polysaccharides, namely homogenization-assisted negative pressure cavitation extraction (HNPCE), which succeeded in the extraction of Astragalus polysaccharides (APs). Central composite design and kinetic model were applied to optimize the extraction conditions, and the optimal parameters were obtained as follows: homogenization time 70 s, negative pressure −0.068 MPa, extraction temperature 64.8 °C, ratio of water to material 13.4 and extraction time 53 min. The proposed method exhibited considerable predominance in terms of higher APs yield (16.74%) with much lower temperature and shorter duration, as against the reported hot water extraction method (14.33% of APs yield with 100 °C and 3 h). Moreover, FT-IR results showed that HNPCE method did not alter the primary structure of polysaccharides. Furthermore, the pilot-scale application of HNPCE was successfully performed with 16.62% of APs yield. Thus, HNPCE is an excellent alternative method for the extraction of polysaccharides from Astragalus or other plant materials in industry.