Application of Spray Drying process to convert Beneficial Compounds extracted from Plants into free-flowing powder

The use of herbal tablets has been rapidly growing and significant research work is being carried out worldwide with the goal to reap the benefits of the many useful plants that are available with medicinal values. Many of these plants go largely underutilized either due to lack of information on not only just the medicinal properties but simple and effective extraction methodologies as well, without sacrificing the properties of the extracts. Once extracted, the concentrates also must be converted into a suitable form that can be loaded in a capsule etc., ready to be consumed. While there many process methodologies being used worldwide to extract the useful resources from the plant, focus also must be on the process methodology that is being practiced to convert the extract (liquid or semi solid) into a solid free flowing powder form. Thus, in an herbal tablet, there many factors concerned with the manufacturing. They are (i) Identifying the most suitable plant for a particular immunity boosting purpose (ii) extraction of the useful contents, mostly in a liquid or slurry form (iii) transform the extract into a user-friendly product such as powder and finally (iv) encapsulation of the powder for ease of human consumption. This paper brings in a review of the several useful plants available around us across the world. In addition, the paper also highlights the suitable experimental results of the usefulness of spray-drying technology, which is a highly versatile process methodology to transform the extracts into free-flowing powder.