The invention provides a method for preparing high-purity
beta elemene from natural plants containing the
beta elemene such as
curcuma zedoary (earthnuts or tubers of the
curcuma zedoary), cedronella (fresh leaves of the cedronella), yellowtop (roots, stems, leaves, flowers and seeds of the yellowtop) and so on, which can improve the production efficiency from starting materials to the high-purity
beta elemene and reduce production cost. Compared with the prior art, the method is mainly different in that the roots, stems, leaves, flowers and seeds of the natural plants are taken as raw materials;
oleum volatile of specific parts of the natural plants is obtained by methods for extracting different
oleum volatiles, and is distilled by molecular
distillation method to remove compositions with high boiling points and non-volatile compositions;
impurity compositions are removed by the
ethanol extraction method and
silver nitrate complex extraction method; and finally the beta
elemene with the content between 95.0 and 99.9 percent is obtained through reduced pressure
distillation or rectification. The bulk pharmaceutical chemicals not only can be prepared into oral dosing preparation such as
emulsion oral liquid, self-emulsifying / self-microemulsifying capsules, soft capsules and so on, but also can be prepared into non-alimentary dosing preparation such as
emulsion injection, liquid drugs injection, transdermal absorbent,
lung sprays,
suppository and so on. The method has the advantages of novel design, concise operating steps, mild operating conditions and improvement of the production efficiency of the beta
elemene.