Steam Explosion Technology Applied to High-Value Utilization of Herb Medicine Resources

Utilization of herb medicine requires combination of modern and traditional methods to develop new medicines which are high quality, safe, stable and convenient. At the same time, herb medicine resource is an important biomass resources, can be used to replace petroleum, gas and coal resources for energy, materials and chemicals production. Application of modern technology to enhance the value of the herb medicine resources is an important development direction for herb medicine research. The roles of steam explosion technology for high-value utilization of herb medicine resources are gradually exhibiting; steam explosion treatment can break the barriers of herb medicine plant cell wall structure, as a result, it is conducive to separation and extraction of active ingredients from medicine plant; steam explosion is contributed to the deglycosylation of glycosides in the natural plants and improves the efficiency of extraction and separation of aglycone; steam explosion is used in herb medicine processing and detoxification with several advantages such as efficient, fast, avoiding the loss of active ingredients, etc; steam explosion process is conducive to effective separation and utilization of non-medicinal components such as cellulose and hemicellulose for the production of ethanol, butanol and other energy and chemical products. This paper reviews the research of steam explosion technology for the high-value utilization of herb medicine resources.