Extraction processes in making a herbal medicine concoction

Medicinal herbs contain active pharmaceutical ingredients which are trapped inside the tissues and cells of the plant materials. The most commonly used processes of extracting the active pharmaceutical ingredients from the herbs consist of "Soaking" the herbs in the water, "Heating" the mixture to bring up the temperature of the water to boiling point and hold the "Boiling" for a period of time. Each process has specific characteristics for the extraction of the active pharmaceutical ingredients in terms of achieving the necessary therapeutic effects in relation to the required concentrations and compositions of various ingredients. This paper describes methods of formulating the mathematical equations of the extraction processes in relation to time and energy spent. There are various ways of consuming energy and spending time on the three extracting processes in producing the prescribed concoction of a Chinese Medicine. The utilization of the established equations in developing a production model under the evolutionary concept of genetic algorithm to provide the operating solutions of the three processes in meeting the given constraints of energy and time is discussed.