Herbal extraction batch records: what differs from tablets

A tablet record begins with a controlled excipient or an active ingredient from a named supplier. A herbal record begins with a plant, and plants vary. The record must say which species, which part, which origin and which harvest season.

Identity checks sit at the gate: macroscopic description, a sample for the lab, sometimes a TLC fingerprint against a reference. Each raw lot gets a number that every later step carries forward.

Moisture matters at once. A lot of dried root that has taken in damp during storage weighs more but holds less plant, so the quantity charged must be corrected.

Compression has a few settings. Extraction has many: solvent type, solvent-to-herb ratio, temperature, number of cycles and hold time at each stage. A change in any of them changes what comes out of the percolator.

The record should capture each cycle separately. Cycle one at 70 minutes and cycle two at 45 are different facts, and an average hides the difference. The operator also notes the filtrate’s appearance and any filter blockage.

Equipment is part of identity too. Which extractor, which reactor, which filter press? Cleaning status of each is checked before the charge, as with any shared equipment.

A tablet batch reconciles counts of tablets against granules. An extraction batch reconciles the dried extract against the dried herb that went in. A low figure points to losses in the marc, the filters or the evaporator.

Solvent is the second ledger. Ethanol charged, ethanol recovered by the distillation unit, ethanol lost and ethanol sent to waste must roughly balance. A gap here is a safety question as well as a yield question.

Residual solvent in the final extract is tested and its result is attached to the record. Without that link, the solvent ledger only tells half the story.

Two lots of the same herb carry different amounts of the active marker. Standardisation adjusts the extract, often by blending lots or adding an approved carrier, until the marker content meets the specification.

This step needs its own page. It lists the lots blended, the marker result of each, the calculation and the final analyst result. A reviewer must be able to trace the finished extract back to every contributing lot.

Software suits this work. A blend calculator driven by stored lab results removes arithmetic slips, and a locked record prevents a recalculation after the analyst’s result is approved.

Keep the format in the order of work: identity, preparation, extraction cycles, concentration, drying, standardisation, packing. Operators should never flip pages to find where a value belongs.

Make mandatory those fields that are most often skipped, such as moisture, cycle times and solvent recovered. A field left empty should stop the batch from closing.

Take your last extraction batch record and mark every field that a tablet record would not have. That marked list is the start of your template.