Jilin University to Transfer Industrial-Scale Dihydroquercetin Extraction Technology for RMB 90,000

Recently, Jilin University released a public notice on the transformation of scientific and technological achievements, planning to transfer them through listed trading.“A Method for the Industrial Extraction of Dihydroquercetin from Larch Tree Roots”The relevant patents were assigned to Jilin Jianwei Natural Biotechnology Co., Ltd. for an assignment fee ofRMB 90,000. The inventors of this patent are Professor Tang Jun and his team.

The assignee of this patent isJilin Jianwei Natural Biotechnology Co., Ltd., the companyDihydroquercetin, ArabinogalactanAs its core offering, the company provides end-to-end biological extraction and health product solutions that encompass R&D, manufacturing, sales, and comprehensive quality control across the entire value chain. Its product portfolio includes key ingredients such as dihydroquercetin and arabinogalactan, along with a series of food products, skincare items, daily necessities, health food ingredients, and cosmetic raw materials formulated primarily with these ingredients. These products are suitable for diverse application scenarios, including health and wellness, beauty and skincare, food processing, and pharmaceutical R&D.

This patent discloses an industrial-scale method for extracting high-purity dihydroquercetin from the roots of larch trees in Northeast China. Its core objective is to leverage waste resources to efficiently and environmentally produce dihydroquercetin, which possesses significant pharmaceutical and application value.

Dihydroquercetin is a potent antioxidant (with a free radical scavenging capacity of 32 μmol/mg) belonging to the vitamin P group. It can serve as a primary or auxiliary raw material in pharmaceuticals and as a bioactive food additive, while also exhibiting potential effects such as regulating lipid metabolism, anti-cancer, anti-viral, and cardiovascular and cerebrovascular protection.

This patented product features high purity (≥94%) and is free of harmful impurities, meeting the stringent requirements of high-end applications such as biomedical use.

Dihydroquercetin, a natural bioactive compound with potent antioxidant properties, is widely used in pharmaceuticals, health supplements, and industrial applications, with market demand showing a continuous upward trend. The Dahurian larch (Larix gmelinii) is an important natural source of dihydroquercetin, containing exceptionally high levels of this compound in its roots, which should ideally serve as a premium raw material for industrial-scale extraction. However, existing extraction technologies suffer from numerous critical issues that severely constrain the industrialization and market supply of dihydroquercetin.

Traditional dihydroquercetin extraction technologies have encountered core technical bottlenecks: on the one hand,Significant Deficiencies in Solvent Selection. Certain processes employ toxic or flammable and explosive reagents such as methyl tert-butyl ether, acetonitrile, and chlorinated solvents, which not only pose health risks to production operators but also present significant environmental hazards, resulting in extremely high subsequent environmental remediation costs.

On the other hand,Extraction Efficiency and Purity Are Difficult to Achieve Simultaneously. Traditional processes mostly use water or common alcohols as extraction agents, which tend to co-extract large amounts of impurities such as arabinogalactan, rosin, and lignin. The separation and purification procedures are complex, resulting in generally low product purity. Moreover, operations such as repeated crystallization further reduce the yield; reported yields from existing processes are generally difficult to reach 5‰, failing to meet the economic requirements for scaled-up production.

FromIndustrial ApplicationFrom this perspective, existing technologies still exhibit significant practical limitations. Some processes involve complex steps and stringent operating conditions, imposing extremely high requirements on equipment and making standardization difficult, thereby precluding the possibility of large-scale mass production. Although other processes have attempted to simplify the workflow, they suffer from low raw material utilization rates and fail to screen for specific raw materials rich in dihydroquercetin, resulting in low production efficiency and persistently high costs.

Meanwhile, traditional techniques inadequately recycle and utilize forestry waste resources. The stumps of Dahurian larch (Larix gmelinii) are largely discarded after logging, which not only results in resource wastage but also fails to exploit their value as a rich source of dihydroquercetin, thereby contradicting the industrial trend toward green and sustainable development.

Furthermore, the absence of unified industrial production standards in existing technologies, coupled with a lack of clear specifications for raw material selection and significant fluctuations in process parameters, results in suboptimal product quality stability and a wide purity variation range. This makes it difficult to meet the stringent purity requirements (≥94%) mandated by the pharmaceutical and high-end health supplement industries.

These issues collectively have brought the industrialized production of dihydroquercetin to a standstill“Low quality and efficiency, high toxicity and consumption, difficult to scale up”dilemma. Currently, the market urgently needs a low-toxicity, environmentally friendly, high-yield, and high-purity extraction solution adaptable to industrialization, in order to address pain points across the entire process from raw material utilization to product output.

To address the long-standing industry challenges in the field of dihydroquercetin extraction, namely “high solvent toxicity, low yield and purity, and poor industrial scalability,”Jilin University’s Tang Jun, Qi Xin, et al.Through targeted research and development, we have successfully developed “a method for the industrial extraction of dihydroquercetin from larch tree roots.” This technology utilizes"High-Value Utilization of Forestry Waste Resources + Full-Process Low-Toxicity and High-Efficiency Technology"Leveraging these two core advantages, we have developed an integrated solution encompassing raw material screening, extraction and purification, and crystallization and drying. This approach significantly overcomes the limitations of traditional processes—namely, severe pollution, low efficiency, and inferior product quality—setting a new benchmark for the green industrial-scale extraction of natural active ingredients.

In terms of raw material utilization,This technology achieves disruptive innovation by transforming waste into valuable resources to establish a green raw material supply chain. Traditional processes either overlook the impact of raw material quality on extraction efficiency or rely on freshly felled timber, thereby exacerbating resource depletion and ecological pressure. In contrast, this technology precisely targets harvested waste roots of Korean larch (Larix olgensis) located near 41°46′16.72″ N, 126°56′9.73″ E, and clearly defines selection criteria: trees aged 45–50 years, grown on shaded slopes, and subjected to heavy snowfall during the winter prior to harvesting. By mixing taproots and lateral roots in a 1:1 ratio, the dihydroquercetin content consistently reaches 1.5%–1.9%, laying a solid foundation for high yield.

Most critically, the raw materials are sourced entirely from waste generated by selective logging or clear-cutting in artificial forests, and the residual wood chips remaining after extraction can be further processed into biomass pellet fuel."Discarded tree roots → high-purity dihydroquercetin → biomass energy" closed-loop resource recycling chain.This initiative not only effectively addresses the challenge of forestry waste disposal but also avoids ecological disturbances caused by additional logging, fully aligning with the concept of green and sustainable development. Preliminary estimates indicate that raw material acquisition costs can be reduced to 30%–50% of those associated with traditional processes.

In terms of core processes,Achieving Through Multi-Stage Collaborative Innovation"Low Toxicity, High Yield, High Purity"Three Breakthroughs.

First, the solvent system combines green safety with high selectivity:Completely eliminating highly toxic or flammable and explosive reagents such as methyl tert-butyl ether, acetonitrile, and chlorinated solvents, this process employs 95% premium-grade n-hexane—an industrially mature, low-toxicity, and easily recyclable solvent—as the primary extraction medium. N-hexane is widely used in fields such as vegetable oil extraction and benefits from well-established recovery and safety management systems. It is combined with purified water and trace amounts of analytical-grade glacial acetic acid, precisely formulated at a ratio of raw material : n-hexane : purified water : glacial acetic acid = 1:4:1:0.001. This solvent system exhibits exceptional selectivity, selectively leaching only turpentine oil as the major impurity, thereby significantly simplifying subsequent separation processes. Both extraction and concentration are conducted entirely within a closed vacuum system, achieving an n-hexane recovery rate exceeding 90%, which effectively reduces solvent consumption and environmental emissions.

Second, innovations in crystallization technology enhance efficiency and purity:InnovativelyAdopting the “Ethanol-Assisted + Titanium Rod Heterogeneous Crystallization” Mode, an appropriate amount of 95% ethanol was added during the initial crystallization and recrystallization stages to optimize the crystallization environment, and 8–10 clean titanium rods were introduced as heterogeneous nucleation sites to effectively surpass the material balance critical point. This approach not only shortened the crystallization cycle to 96–108 hours but also significantly improved the purity and uniformity of the crystals. Combined with two rounds of centrifugal separation and vacuum freeze-drying at -15°C, the final product achieved stable purity.> 94%, reaching up to 94.98%, far exceeding the levels of traditional crude extracts.

In terms of industrial adaptability,This technology demonstrates significant advantages of "scalability, standardization, and high stability." The process can handle 1,000 kg of raw materials per batch, utilizing mature industrial equipment such as a 6 m³ multi-functional extraction tank and a 500 L/h single-effect external circulation evaporator. Key parameters are clearly defined and controllable (e.g., cold maceration for 14 hours, concentration vacuum degree of 0.06–0.08 MPa, and centrifugation speed of 1,500 rpm), effectively avoiding batch-to-batch variability caused by ambiguous parameters in traditional processes. Validated through five parallel experimental runs, the product yield remained stable at 5.75‰–8.34‰, significantly outperforming previously reported traditional methods.

In terms of safety and compliance,Raw material cleaning is strictly performed in accordance with Good Agricultural Practices (GAP). No high-risk reagents are used throughout the process, ensuring no harmful solvent residues in the final product, thereby directly meeting the access requirements for pharmaceutical ingredients and high-end health supplements. The manufacturing process is well-defined, comprising multiple standardized operational units including raw material pretreatment, extraction, purification, crystallization, and drying. Clear quality control checkpoints are established at each stage, facilitating rapid replication and deployment in chemical and natural product extraction enterprises without the need for complex equipment modifications.

Furthermore, this technology demonstrates significant advantages in cost control and market competitiveness. By leveraging multiple cost-reduction mechanisms—such as utilizing waste raw materials, efficiently recovering solvents, and simplifying and optimizing processes—the comprehensive production cost has been assessed to be 40%–60% lower than that of traditional processes. The product achieves a purity of ≥94% and a particle size of 200 mesh, with highly stable quality. Compared to traditional crude products (which typically have a purity below 80%), this product holds substantial potential for quality-based premium pricing in high-end application fields such as pharmaceutical intermediates and functional food additives, thereby exhibiting strong market competitiveness.

Dihydroquercetin, as a high-value natural bioactive compound, is experiencing sustained growth in market demand across pharmaceuticals, health supplements, and antioxidant materials. This trend is driving domestic and international enterprises and research institutions to pursue technological R&D and industrialization strategies centered on “raw material expansion, process optimization, and cost reduction with efficiency enhancement.”

Currently, similar technologies on the market primarily focus on three core directions, namelyRaw Material Source(such as tree bark, leaves, and roots),Extraction Solvent(organic solvents, aqueous extraction, enzyme-assisted methods) andPurification Process(crystallization, chromatography, membrane separation), forming a competitive landscape where “upgrading of traditional processes” and “R&D of green new technologies” proceed in parallel.

Zhejiang Conba Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd.Announced a preparation technology for dihydroquercetin composite effervescent tablets, which addresses the challenges of poor water solubility of dihydroquercetin and the instability of sodium hyaluronate under acidic conditions, successfully developing a dihydroquercetin food formulation that is easy to administer and enables efficient absorption.

Beijing Institute of Technology Chongqing Innovation CenterA chemically synthetic method for optically pure (2R,3R)-dihydroquercetin has been developed, the core of which lies in the efficient preparation of (2R,3R)-dihydroquercetin with high optical purity through a five-step chemical reaction. This approach addresses the limitations of traditional methods, such as reliance on plant extraction, use of toxic reagents, and insufficient optical purity. By overcoming the constraints of existing dihydroquercetin preparation techniques, this method provides a cost-effective, straightforward, green, safe, and industrially scalable synthetic route. Ultimately, it yields (2R,3R)-dihydroquercetin—the naturally predominant configuration with enhanced biological activity—with an optical purity of ≥98% and a yield of ≥80%.

Nuode Traceability (Guangzhou) Biotechnology Co., Ltd.Addressing the industry pain point of relying on scarce plant extraction for dihydroquercetin and its limited mass production, we have introduced a patented two-step chemical synthesis technology for dihydroquercetin. This technology uses inexpensive and readily available aromatic/aliphatic unsaturated aldehydes and hydroxyphenols as starting materials. First, an N-heterocyclic carbene-catalyzed oxidative coupling reaction is employed to prepare phenolic functional group ketone intermediates with high yield in a single step. Then, using this intermediate as the core, an oxidation-ring opening-cyclization reaction is carried out under alkaline conditions with hydrogen peroxide, followed by purification through high-temperature dissolution and cooling crystallization. Its core advantage lies in eliminating dependence on scarce plant resources such as larch, with mild reaction conditions (mainly 25–30°C), no use of highly toxic reagents, and a total yield exceeding 80% for the two-step reactions. Furthermore, the process steps are concise, with moderate equipment requirements, and the purity of the product has been verified by nuclear magnetic resonance and infrared spectroscopy.