Application Fields and Development Prospects of Microwave Drying and Sterilization of Medicinal Materials

In the process of making medicinal materials, in order to prevent mildew, decay, and other phenomena, drying and sterilization are essential links. Microwave equipment is widely used in the drying sterilization and deep processing production lines of Chinese medicinal materials, mainly in pills, honey pills, pills, drug particles, oral liquids, Chinese medicinal materials, and other drying sterilization treatments.

For a long time, China's pharmaceutical processing industry used traditional heating and drying sterilization methods, such as high temperature and high pressure infrared processing of drugs. These traditional drying and sterilization methods generally have the disadvantages of low thermal efficiency, high power consumption costs, long heating times, poor drying quality, environmental pollution, and a large area of equipment. At the same time, the traditional drying and sterilization method needs to keep warm for 20–40 minutes at a high temperature of 120 °C, which damages the efficacy and nutrients of drugs to a certain extent, resulting in the loss of medicinal value and market value of drugs. With the development of the pharmaceutical processing industry, the market is more effective for drugs. For value, and with the promotion of energy conservation and environmental protection concepts, high utilization rate, high production efficiency, and green environmental protection almost becoming the theme of all walks of life, traditional drying sterilization will be gradually eliminated, and using microwave drying, sterilization technology can give full play to the microwave drying characteristics and solve the disadvantages of traditional heating, making microwave technology a new trend in the drying market.

The application of microwave drying technology in the pharmaceutical industry has many aspects, such as rapid drying, insecticidal treatment, and sterilization of Chinese medicinal materials; drying and sterilization of proprietary Chinese medicine, pills; drying and sterilization of powder agents; and sterilization of oral liquid. In order to prevent mildew in the process of storage and transportation, Chinese medicinal materials need to be dried. When drying the raw materials of drugs by the traditional heating method, the internal and external heating of the raw materials are uneven, with large energy consumption, a long drying time, and a poor drying effect. With microwave processing, the material can directly absorb microwave energy to achieve the purpose of heating, so the material inside and outside the heating is evenly heated and has a drying speed. The degree of fastness, good appearance of medicinal materials, intact efficacy, small power consumption, and other characteristics