RESUMO
To improve the spray drying effect of extract of Wenjing Zhitong Prescription, this study takes the yield, hygroscopic property and the fluidity of dry powder as indexes to screen out auxiliary materials, and the proportion of the auxiliary materials was optimized based on the mixing design experiment; based on that, HPLC method was established for the determination of glycyrrhizin and 6-gingerol in spray powder, the yield of spray powder and the retention rate of the two index components were taken as indexes to further optimize the spray drying parameters. The finally selected auxiliary materials were light magnesium oxide, maltodextrin and silica, and regression equations of dry powder yield, moisture absorption rate, angle of rest with proportion of auxiliary materials were established, and the optimized proportion of auxiliary materials was dry paste-light magnesium oxide-maltodextrin-silica=0.5∶0.305∶0.145∶0.05; according to the optimized drying process parameters of Wenjing Zhitong Prescription, initial temperature was 60 ℃, air inlet temperature was 130 ℃, air flow rate was 35 m~3·h~(-1), atomizing pressure was 40 mm, and liquid inlet speed was 4.5 mL·min~(-1). Under these conditions, the dry powder yield was 90.28%, the retention rate of glycyrrhizin was 74.51%, and the retention rate of 6-gingerol was 72.10%. In this study, optimized auxiliary materials can improve the yield of spray drying and the property of spray powder, and the optimized processing conditions were good for retaining the unstable gingerol components, which can lay a foundation for the further preparation research of meridian warming and pain relieving prescriptions, and provide reference for extract of other traditional Chinese medicine extracts that are difficult to spray drying.