ABSTRACT
Dioscorea Zingiberensis C.H Wright (DZW), generally known as “Yellow Ginger”, contains 5% of dioscin, which, under the eect of acid or enzyme, will be hydrolyzed into Diosgenin, which is a raw material needed in synthesizing about 400 dierent kinds of steroid hormones. On the basis of laboratory studies, 500 kg of DZW is used as main raw material and ultrasonic-assisted extraction method is adopted, surfactant is introduced to improve the dioscin solubility. Flocculation of dioscin is the key to this new method for producing diosgenin (appreciated into New Method). Five experiments were carried out and the yield rate of diosgenin, material cost, discharge of wastewater, the COD, BOD and color of wastewater as the evaluation criteria to study the influence this new method will have on the production of diosgenin. Based on this, a comparison is made between this method and the traditional method, and it is discovered that the new method can produce the most diosgenin; the material cost is the lowest; the discharge of wastewater and its COD, BOD is the least, and they all meet the national discharge standard for companies of this type, and they also basically meet the national discharge standard for newly-established companies that produce diosgenin, so it is a very promising clean production method.
