Vaccinium meridionale Swartz Supercritical CO₂ Extraction: Effect of Process Conditions and Scaling Up.

Alexis López-Padilla,Tiziana Fornari,Claudia Restrepo Flórez,Guillermo Reglero,Alejandro Ruiz-Rodriguez,Diana Rivero Barrios

doi:10.3390/ma9070519

Abstract

Vaccinium meridionale Swartz (Mortiño or Colombian blueberry) is one of the Vaccinium species abundantly found across the Colombian mountains, which are characterized by high contents of polyphenolic compounds (anthocyanins and flavonoids). The supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) of Vaccinium species has mainly focused on the study of V. myrtillus L. (blueberry). In this work, the SFE of Mortiño fruit from Colombia was studied in a small-scale extraction cell (273 cm3) and different extraction pressures (20 and 30 MPa) and temperatures (313 and 343 K) were investigated. Then, process scaling-up to a larger extraction cell (1350 cm3) was analyzed using well-known semi-empirical engineering approaches. The Broken and Intact Cell (BIC) model was adjusted to represent the kinetic behavior of the low-scale extraction and to simulate the large-scale conditions. Extraction yields obtained were in the range 0.1%–3.2%. Most of the Mortiño solutes are readily accessible and, thus, 92% of the extractable material was recovered in around 30 min. The constant CO2 residence time criterion produced excellent results regarding the small-scale kinetic curve according to the BIC model, and this conclusion was experimentally validated in large-scale kinetic experiments.

Highlights

The genus Vaccinium comprises a group of plants that includes up to 450 species with promising biological activities [1]
Some authors have reported a cardioprotective effect of products obtained from Mortiño fermentation, suggesting that the consumption of Mortiño or its related products could be of importance in the maintenance of health and in preventing cardiovascular diseases [10,11]
The experimental results obtained follow the cross-over behavior observed for the solubility of solutes in supercritical CO2 : at low pressure (10 MPa) the yield decreased with the rise of temperature, but at higher pressure (30 MPa) the yield increased with increasing temperature

Summary

Introduction

The genus Vaccinium comprises a group of plants that includes up to 450 species with promising biological activities [1]. Abreu et al have reported medicinal uses for food uses of 36 Vaccinium species, mainly from North America, Asia and Europe [3]. The most commonly reported uses of Vaccinium extracts are as antioxidants due to their high content of anthocyanins and other antioxidants [4,5], but in addition to the antioxidant activity due to the anthocyanins, there is evidence of their antidiabetic [6], anti-hyperlipidemic [7], anti-tumorigenic [8] and neuroprotective effects [9]. Vaccinium meridionale Swartz (Mortiño or Colombian blueberry) is one of the Vaccinium species which grows in the Andean region of South America at 2300–3300 m above the sea level. Some authors have reported a cardioprotective effect of products obtained from Mortiño fermentation, suggesting that the consumption of Mortiño or its related products could be of importance in the maintenance of health and in preventing cardiovascular diseases [10,11]

Methods

Results

Conclusion