Abstract
Supercritical fluids are used for the extraction of desired ingredients from natural materials, but also for the removal of undesired and harmful ingredients. In this paper, the pertinent physical and chemical properties of supercritical water, methanol, ethanol, carbon dioxide, and their mixtures are provided. The methodologies used with supercritical fluid extraction are briefly dealt with. Advances in the application of supercritical extraction to fuels, the gaining of antioxidants and other useful items from biomass, the removal of undesired ingredients or contaminants, and the preparation of nanosized particles of drugs are described.
Highlights
Extraction by supercritical fluids pertains to the selective extraction of desired ingredients or removal of undesired ingredients from natural materials
The application of supercritical fluid extraction with supercritical carbon dioxide was introduced for the decaffeination of coffee beans by Zosel in 1974 [123]
This process has matured since to a major industrial process, but advances in supercritical fluid extraction have been extensive in recent years
Summary
Extraction by supercritical fluids pertains to the selective extraction of desired ingredients or removal of undesired ingredients from natural materials. The chemical and physicochemical properties of the supercritical fluids that are relevant to extraction are their hydrogen bond donation and acceptance abilities, and their polarity and polarizability These properties for room temperature solvents are generally obtained by solvatochromic probes, and for the supercritical fluids they are discussed in Reference [5], Processes 2019, 7, 156; doi:10.3390/pr7030156 www.mdpi.com/journal/processes. Dilute solutions of water, methanol, and ethanol in supercritical carbon dioxide are relevant to the supercritical extraction processes, these polar co-solvents being called entrainers, since they enhance the ability of the non-polar carbon dioxide to dissolve polar solutes. To produce nanoparticles of drugs for their enhanced administration and physiological availability In these methods, the supercritical fluid is first used to extract the desired materials from natural sources and application of these variants produces the required nano-particles. The state-of-the-art supercritical anti-solvent (SAS) technique was described in Reference [21] and that of the gas saturated solutions method (PGSS) was described in Reference [22]
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