Study on supercritical fluid extraction of solanesol from industrial tobacco waste

Abstract

Extraction of solanesol from industrial tobacco waste using supercritical CO2 was studied. The extraction yield was obtained at various pressures, temperatures, CO2 flow rates and mean particle diameters. The content of solanesol in extract was determined by HPLC analysis. The broken and intact cell model was successfully applied to both the tobacco extraction kinetics and solanesol extraction kinetics. The internal mass transfer coefficients were computed for both extracts and solanesol at various experimental conditions. The extraction rate of solanesol was found higher than that of tobacco extract, indicating that shorter extraction time resulted in higher selectivity of solanesol. Furthermore, a pretreatment with a solvent of n-hexane:95% ethanol at 4:6 volumetric ratio was tried at a selected experimental condition to improve the selectivity of solanesol. A final product with solanesol content of 0.44 was obtained. Consequently, this study provides a new route for generating solanesol from industrial tobacco waste.