Supercritical fluid extraction

SYNOPSIS

 Objective

To study Supercritical fluid extraction of organic compounds from solids and aqueous solutions and
its application in food industry.

 Introduction

In recent years, the use of supercritical fluid extraction for the removal of organic compounds
from different liquid and solid matrices has attracted much attention. This technique has some
advantages over more conventional separation techniques, largely due to the unique physical
properties of supercritical fluids. Supercritical fluids exhibit a liquid-like density, while their viscosity
and diffusivity remain between gas-like and liquid-like values. Also, the recovery of a supercritical
solvent after extraction can be carried out relatively simply by reducing the pressure and evaporating
the solvent, because a supercritical solvent is usually a gas at NTP. There are several applications in
the food processing, pharmaceutical and chemical industries, notably in the decaffeination of coffee
beans and the production of polyethylene .

 Existing technology

Extraction involves the separation of medicinally active portions of plant or animal tissue
from the inactive or inert components using selective solvents in standard extraction procedures.
The products so obtained from plants are relatively impure liquids, semisolids or powders intended
only for oral or external use. So extraction continues to be of considerable interest in order to
obtain improved yields of drug derived from plant and animal sources.

Techniques of extraction methods continue to be investigated and applied to obtain higher yields
of the active substances from natural sources. The principle methods of extraction are - • Maceration
• Percolation

• Digestion
• Infusion

• Decoction

 References
1) McHugh, M., Krukonis, V. Supercritical Fluid Extraction, 2nd ed., Butterworth-Heinemann,
Boston, 1994.
2) Kumar, S. K., Johnston, K. P. Modeling the solubility of solids in supercritical fluids with
density as the independent variable. J. Supercritical Fluids, 1(1988), pp. 15–.
3) Klesper, E. Chromatography with supercritical fluids. In: Extraction with Supercritical Gases.
Schneider, G. M., Stahl, E., Wilke, G. (eds.).