Plant extract stevia

Stevia Rebaudiana is a plant originally from South America, and now widely grow in humid and wet environment such as South Asia for its leaves, from which we can extract steviol glucoside (stevioside) which is 250-450 time sweeter than sucrose. The steviol glucoside has been approved as natural sweetener in many countries and the demand is increasing due to health benefits to replace the traditional sugars.

The extraction is done in hot water, and the filtrate is deashed on a Strong Acid Cation (SAC) resin to remove the cations, and a Weak Base Anion (WBA on FB form) to remove the anions and the color. Macroporous resins are recommended. For higher grade of purification, adsorption and recovery of pure steviol glucoside on acrylic adsorbant could be also proposed. Solutions also exists to separate the stevioside A which has a bitter test.

Lenntech can assist for the selection by performing adsorption and elution test in our laboratory, or by supplying the best resin candidates for customers having their own lab and pilot equipments.